Memorial Day 2015

Don’t thank me for my service. Today is not our, the living’s, day.

And don’t wish me a “happy” Memorial Day. Today is not a celebration, it is a solemn remembrance of those who should be sitting in the empty chair. But it is only held in reverence by the few who understand. The rest enjoy barbecues and allow their children to have a fun-filled day off from school, blissfully ignorant of the reason why. Don’t want to harm their precious psyches after all. It’s traumatizing to know the ugly truth; there is evil in the world, and the cost of confronting it is steep.

But they needn’t worry, that price will be paid by others. All so that they, still living in the blissful utopia of ignorance, can buy half priced mattresses and televisions at “Holiday Celebration Sales Events”.

And still not to worry, the volume on those TV’s on display will be muted. They won’t need to hear what few reports there are about the barbaric savages who behead and crucify those who, just a few short years ago, we sacrificed so much for. American lives given in the effort to allow them a chance at the peace that our sheep take for granted. Now that chance at peace and liberty has been turned into a nightmare of beheadings, rape, slavery, crucifixions, and mass murder.

No, they needn’t have their celebrations blemished by news that Ramadi, a city whose streets are stained with American and free Iraqi blood, has fallen to daesh. The sound of that burger sizzling on the grill should be enough to stifle the screams of the 700 entire families; men, women and children, who were last week executed for no reason other than that they wanted peace and freedom. And were naive enough to believe that the sacrifice of our fallen would be honored by their successors.

Enjoy that burger people, it was expensive. But no worries, someone else paid for it.

We go to war to confront the evil which threatens not only us, but the entire world. Not because it is the easy thing, it never is, but because it is the right thing. And because more often than not we are the only ones who can. Even more so, the only ones who will. Now, rather than make the hard right choice, we make the easy wrong one and allow evil to rampage unchecked. We sit silently in our moral cowardice and watch our Iraqi allies, prematurely abandoned and betrayed, falter, fall and die.

Those who have been there, and those who understand, watch as all that was gained with our warriors’ blood is deliberately thrown away and given over to our enemies.

And we pray that those whose sacrifice is being wasted will forgive us.

Lately Princess Walnut has been going through a bit of a hero worship phase with me. For example she asked me if tattoos hurt, and I said that no, they didn’t, to which she replied “Well they don’t hurt you, you’re a Marine”. Things like that. Well yesterday I was opening a pull tab on a soda can and for some unknown reason it popped in my hand and the tab flew up with enough force to almost break the skin on my palm. I let loose a mild epithet which caught her attention and she asked what happened. I told her the can had popped, and that it had scared the Hell out of me. She looked at me and said “It scared YOU? No, that’s not good, you don’t get scared”. I corrected myself and said that it startled me, and she said that was better, if I was scared then things were bad.

Sweetie, I AM scared. I’m scared of what the future holds, and scared that we are no longer living lives worthy of the sacrifice of over 1.5 million brave Americans. Once it could be said that 200 years of sacrifice was worth it.

Now, I’m not so sure.

And I am scared.