It's officially summer for the college aged son and the "Last week ever" for the high school senior son. The nest will empty out in August but for now it is full and happening.
Breakfast is the only time everyone is in the same room. For some mysterious reason inside the human existence, work and school days start within minutes of each other, and we as a family actually get to see ourselves together.
All parents are proud of their own children and would give their own lives to protect them. That is why I feel so incredibly sad and angry about news of this man's loss. It is his personal pain and it is ours. It is a tragedy and it will happen again and again until we do something about it, since our leaders seem to be otherwise occupied.
George Bush was waving a stick at the band and pretending to be a conductor while the news came that 1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich was dead in Iraq. The band was playing "Stars and Stripes Forever." George Bush's own children are partying somewhere under protection of the Secret Service.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. is a conservative republican who, nonetheless, has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. Now, while our Commander in Chief acts like a complete fool, Andrew Bacevich senior must deal with burying Andrew Bacevich, Jr.
"I can only imagine the special agony reserved for a professional military man to lose a child in a war he has now spent years arguing was a mistake. "...Josh Marshall
My family has left the house headed for their various daily routines. My heart follows them leaving me incomplete until they return.
What can George Bush feel about the children whose deaths he's caused?
What must anyone who has ever supported this war feel?
I think President Bush lives in a fantasy world where all his decisions are right. I think it is up to the rest of us now.
PEACE,
Steve
Update (replies):
I'm READY - but what is the plan - I will be first in line !! ...charlie
The only time I ever saw your little boys was in 1989 at the first Rendezvous near Houston. Tempus fugits. My little boys are now 37 and 35, one with two kids and the other with their third being born this Thursday. Two little girls and three little boys. I'm sad for the world thats being made for them. I can't do a thing about it...bob
I served in Iraq as a Marine, and I have many friends and colleagues and brothers-in-service there now or going there soon.
ReplyDeletePeople die in war. That is a fact of life since Plato said: "Only the dead have seen the end to war."
And the sooner you stop lamenting the ill-elected decision to go to war in Iraq, and start offering tangible solutions to the problem rather than just lame "end the war now" - - thereby abanadoning the innocent Iraqis and likely fostering a Mideast-wide civil conflict of unimaginable proportions, the sooner bad may turn to better.
It is indeed adolescent and irresponsible once a bad decision is made, to just give-up and not knuckle down and try like FDR did in the Depression to redouble efforts and try a new approach.
And I am not a Republican, nor am I a Bushie supporter, nor have I ever been. But as Gen Jones, former commander of NATO and previous Marine Commandant said well, "I don't know exactly what we need to do, but I do know we need to do everything possible and spare no resoure to make sure the situation in Iraq is more stable and innocents and interests are protected..."
Weep over your breakfast cereal for the loss of Andy Bacevich Jr, but every day since 2003 the humble and the grand have lost relatives, military losses and Iraqi civilian losses, and instead of living in the world of blaming Bush, it's long since time for Americans to shoulder, together, and seek to move the situation in Iraq in the right direction, and support Gen. Petraeus instead of doing back-seat-from-comfy-America driving and direction. Semper Fi.
- Paul
Paul,
ReplyDeleteYou offer nothing in the way of a solution yourself, except that with your way, there will be more of our friends and loved ones who die with no tangible positive result. I will not play your lame game of moral chicken while people die in a war that has no forseeable end, no possible advantageous result for Americans, and no visionary leadership in sight.
All this war offers is more death. We are not making progress. Semper Fi to the living. Let us not make more dead.
Steve