We mean, other than the dreadful plight of the homeless and all that, which we’ve not heard a peep about since January 20, 2009?
“Grim Milestones”, that’s what.
Interesting, that. Especially if you, too, remember the frantic, ghoulish circle-jerks in the DNC Media prior to January of 2009 every time the number of our fallen passed a round number. Or every time they could catch a picture of a flag-draped coffin, for that matter. Anything they could jerk off their pathetic cocktail sausages to.
Now, there are two arguments about covering war dead and both are pretty decent.
One is that you shouldn’t cover them at all because it only serves to demoralize the civilian population. After all, people die in wars, anybody who isn’t terminally retarded (that is to say “a member of the Democrat Voting Demographic”, but terminally retarded has a better ring to it) ought to know that, so the time for reflection upon the truly horrible costs of war is prior to joining one, not during. You agonize over the price of a car and whether you can afford it before you buy it. You don’t start whining about it after you’ve bought it, claiming that you couldn’t possibly have foreseen that you’d have to pay whatever was on the sticker.
The other is that you can’t, if you’re a decent person, utterly ignore the losses. It’s disrespectful to the fallen to pretend that each and every one of them falling on the field of glory for us isn’t a huge loss. Not just to their loved ones, but to all of us. We all die a little every time one of our brave troops lays down his life for us, we all lose something, part of the best part of us as a nation, and we damn well ought to honor that and express our gratitude and sorrow.
What you can’t argue if you’re a human being is that it’s one thing when a Republican is in office and it’s another when a Democrat is in office. Either it’s A or it’s B. It can’t be both at the same time. Unless you’re Chief “Justice” Roberts and you desperately need to come up with some bullshit so you won’t have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous columns in the New York Times about you doing your job. But enough about Old Yellowstain. He’s immaterial to this subject as he is, indeed, immaterial to homo sapiens at this point.
Personally, we believe that we should honor every single one of our fallen, that we should remind ourselves regularly of the price being paid for us, once the fiery speeches and martial sounds of troops taking off for war have died down, so that we may never forget the sacrifice being made in our name, at our behest, because troops don’t get to decide where and when they fight, and that we may forever remember to live our lives well, to enjoy and defend our freedoms at home as they do abroad, because those lives we lead, that freedom we enjoy, has been bought dearly.
But there are many ways of going about that, and how we go about it should never depend on which party happens to be represented in the White House. The sacrifice is the same, and so should our expressions of gratitude be.
Personally, we lean towards emphasizing what has been bought rather than what has been lost. Mourning our fallen but at the same time celebrating that we have such individuals rather than dwelling on the loss and thus demoralizing ourselves. The latter always emphasizes what’s been lost, it never touches upon what would have been lost if those brave men and women hadn’t given their last full measure of devotion. Rather we should celebrate their devotion, celebrate that we still have something worth fighting for, revel in the victories won with those sacrifices and pledge, solemnly and with all of the conviction that those men and women showed going out there, to defend to the last what they died fighting for, to live good lives so that their deaths will not be for nought and to make sure that, when they come home, what they left to defend is still there.
They deserve at least that much.
Understand, please, that once the battle is joined, retreat and surrender only guarantees that every life lost will have been in vain. They will have died for nothing. Their deaths will be like the pet that you get for your kids because they want one and then later let loose to fend for itself when keeping it becomes too much of a hassle.
Yes, soul searching is necessary when it comes to war, but the time for that is before the war, not during. Once it’s on, you owe it to those you sent off to fight for you to stay the course, to give them all that they need no matter how much your spoiled arse needs to go without to make that happen.
They’re at war.
We’re at the mall.
Thatisall.