Memorial Day Post

For Memorial Day I reprint this piece of mine from the Aberdeen American News.  I lost the date, but it appeared in 2005.

It was an altogether happy day when my neighbor, a South Dakota National Guardsman, returned safely from Iraq. Whatever worries I had while he was away surely can’t compare with those of his wife and family. But I did worry about him, almost every day. My wife and I gave him some heavy duty backpacking socks for Christmas, and he later reported that they made his military boots comfortable for the first time. That was one small gesture of gratitude. This column is another.

The success of the recent elections in Iraq put critics of the war in an uncomfortable position. The Minneapolis Star Tribune put it this way: the Iraqis should be congratulated for their election; nonetheless, “American troops should be called upon to lay down their lives for the defense of the nation, not to bring democracy to anyone.”

This is a reasonable opinion, to be sure, but I believe it does our servicemen and women a disservice. My father served in the Pacific during WWII, and my Uncle Bill was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. They did not sail west in order to revenge the drowned sailors on the Arizona, or because the Japanese had any designs on northeast Arkansas. The Japanese attacked us because they thought it necessary to preserve their Pacific Rim Empire. My uncle and my Dad went to war in Asia because that empire ultimately threatened everyone, everywhere.

Our fighting men in WWII deserve honor not only because they were defending American interests, which surely they were. They are also to be honored precisely because they brought democracy back to Western Europe, and introduced it to Japan. They liberated millions of human beings from the most brutal despotisms. They laid the foundations of postwar peace and prosperity because they fought for something nobler than the mere national interest that is all the Trib will allow.

The U.S. is much stronger today than in 1941, and Saddam Hussein was, at worst, a small scale replica of Hitler. Nonetheless I insist that my friend next door deserves the same measure of honor and gratitude as Dad and Uncle Bud.

The Iraqi election stands as the most promising event in the Middle East since Jimmy Carter brokered peace between Egypt and Israel. Al Jezeera and Al Arabiya, the most important Arab news services, faced a choice on January 30th. Should they concentrate coverage on the long lines of Iraqis waiting to vote, or on the various attempts to kill them? They recognized early in the day that the courage rather than the carnage was the real story. A sense of wonder and optimism was consequently palpable in coffee houses on both sides of the Fertile Crescent.

Critics are wrong to say that this election was only a step towards democracy. Democracy is not a goal, it is a process. Eight million people queuing up to vote is as much democracy as you will ever see, anywhere. Whether the Iraqis will achieve a stable republic remains to be seen. But they have already achieved a remarkably balanced government, in which the Shiite majority must negotiate with Kurdish and Sunni representatives to build a new constitution. That is exactly what a republic looks like.

The most durable symbols of Iraqi self-government are the many images of veiled women holding up ink-stained fingers, in defiance of the insurgents who promised to murder them if they voted. And then there’s Abdul Amir. This Iraqi policeman was blown to bits when he wrestled a suicide bomber to the ground, preventing the man from reaching a line of voters.

Many sensible people will still insist that the 2003 invasion was a mistake, and whoever thinks so should say so. They may yet be proven correct. But just right now siding with the veiled women and Abdul Amir against their murderous enemies is in the interest of the United States, the region, and the world. It is also a noble thing in itself. Our men and women at arms deserve the full measure of honor for it.