LIFE IN 1969

Re the Ted Koppel/Nightline honoring-our-war-dead fracas, I am listening right now to Chris Matthews' Hardball where John Fund (opinionjournal) is asserting that the rationale for the episode tonight is a 1969 issue of Life magazine that featured the names and pictures of one week's [VietNam] war dead. Ted and ABC's motive for tonight's show MUST be an anti-war statement, John says, because they referred to the "impact" of the 1969 Life issue (the implication being that it was a pivotal moment changing the American attitude toward the VN War).

Oh God, I hope the comparison is superficial. It wasn't until 1973 that the VN War "ended." If it takes four years to get us out of Iraq, we're in deeper trouble than I imagined.

John Fund just said, "I think there's too much emotion on both sides." How can there be too much emotion about the life and death of more than 700 Americans and thousands of non-combatant Iraqis?

You know, I'm beginning to wonder (oh my, I'm such a naive idealist) about these pro-life Repugs -- they have so much emotion and passion to apply to the abortion issue (love for the unborn) but so little for lives in full swing--