Sunday, August 1

A HUMAN FACE FOR AMERICAN WAR LOSSES


Kerry's Battle Cry:

In the end, I choose to believe that combat teaches something -- maybe only that death is not an abstraction but an awful wound and lots of pain and, for loved ones, a closure that never comes. It is not a movie and it is not some euphemism about "the fallen," or some other way of ducking the awful reality. It is a terrible fear and an embrace of fickle luck. I think it matters that the men who took this nation to war in Iraq were never in one themselves. The odd man out was Colin Powell, who did not enlist in this war but was drafted for it. For him, as it was for Kerry, Vietnam was a life's lesson. Kerry said a lot of good things Thursday night, but he was best when he simply said he had been there:

"I know what kids go through when they're carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're not sure that's true. As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: 'I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way, but we had no choice.' " There is the ultimate indictment of George Bush. The 42 Americans who died in Iraq in June and the 48 or more (the final figure is not yet known) who have died in July did so because Bush chose to fight an unnecessary war. For a vast and populous country, three dozen deaths a month is not only bearable, it is virtually unnoticeable. John Kerry's task will be to give name and face to the anonymous dead, for us to see, in the confident middle-aged man he is, the occasionally terrified young man he used to be.

On Thursday, in a good speech with a great passage, he reminded us that the war in Iraq is not merely a mistake that can be rectified by some commission or another. It is a personal tragedy, one after another after another -- as immutable as a graveyard headstone.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home