Memorial Day Blues

It's the day we usually remember our war dead but the mood in the country is one of confusion and regret rather than reverence and humility. It feels more appropriate to apologize to our current lost soldiers, than to thank them for their sacrifice to a meaningless cause. I want to reach out to their families and tell them how sorry I am that their loved ones lives were wasted because I couldn't stop our president from inflicting his cruel and illegal imperial folly on the rest of the world. Instead I apologized on their behalf to the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who they killed in obedience to Bush's ambitions.

Bob Herbert doesn't apologize but also notes how this country has fallen from grace and the administration's state of denial. Quoting Amnesty International, he hones in on the point that no amount of perception management can change.

"The critical point is the deliberateness of this policy," he said. "The president gave the green light. The secretary of defense issued the rules. The Justice Department provided the rationale. And the C.I.A. tried to cover it up."

However, the most moving tribute and the strongest condemnation of the Bush administration comes from today's editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

...As this bloody month of car bombs and American deaths -- the most since January -- comes to a close, as we gather in groups small and large to honor our war dead, let us all sing of their bravery and sacrifice. But let us also ask their forgiveness for sending them to a war that should never have happened. In the 1960s it was Vietnam. Today it is Iraq. Let us resolve to never, ever make this mistake again. Our young people are simply too precious.

Amen.