I never had to worry about dying on a far-off battlefield.
I remember feeling some guilt when I was young and all my male friends were required to register for the draft. It really only hit home for me, though, when my own son reached the age to register. Inside I was screaming, "No! Take me instead!" Not that the military would have much use for a middle-aged woman about thirty pounds past her prime but... well, I can type like a fiend.
As a researcher and writer, I've devoted many hours to the concept of war. In my heart, there's a strong conviction that war doesn't have to be. But, given the things my mind has learned, I've had no choice but to concede maybe it does.
War seems a universal, as much an element of the human experience as hunger and sickness, birth and death. I don't know why. I mean, yes, I can put together events that trace a path to war. But I just can't understand how, at one of those points or another, Someone Powerful doesn't do something to change that path so it doesn't have to be war.
We expect our children on playgrounds to resolve all their differences without violence. But that's something the greatest minds of all time haven't figured out a way to do.
If war is a universal, then it's got to be something in our wiring. The most basic of life forms will fight to survive. I guess, as layers of complexity get added on, the concept of 'survival' extends beyond the basics of breathing and encompasses the higher principles such as those encapsulated in The Declaration of Independence.
I know I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the men, women and children--service members and their families--who've sacrificed in the name of our country's survival. I wish none of them ever had to make those sacrifices. But I am so very humbled and grateful, on Memorial Day and every day, that they did make them... and still do. But the gratitude of an individual--and even an entire nation--can never compensate for what they've lost. We can't make it right, not now or ever.
All we can do is keep those service members and their families in our thoughts and in our prayers. And maybe do what we can to prevent sending more of our children to battle.
The volunteers at Wikipedia have compiled lists that detail U.S. deaths in war. You can find that sobering read here.
I am a firm believer in a strong, well-trained military. That force is the greatest deterrent to those who would wish us ill. I also put a lot of faith in technology. I am all in favor of sending a $50,000 piece of equipment to be destroyed if it means saving a single Young American's life.
I want us to have the smartest, fittest, best-trained, and best-equipped fighting force in the world--so we don't have to fight.
Various sources have quoted Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto as referring to the United States, prior to its entry in World War II, as a sleeping giant. Pearl Harbor woke the giant and, in the time since, other events have done the same. But September 11, 2001, enraged the giant as nothing else ever had.
I think it's America's nature to want to be a sleeping giant, secure in the faith there's nothing out there scarier than we are. I look forward to a time when all our families can sleep peacefully again.
I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day, filled with love and laughter. And I hope you take a little time, in the context of that revelry, to remember our sons and daughters who didn't come home.
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