A PROGRESSIVE MEMORIAL DAY

Well, Memorial Day looms. Wingnuts would assert that I, a progressive, even gasp! unrepentent liberal! CHRISTIAN, could not possibly appreciate the significance of the day.

Well, my beloved deceased dad was a career Air Force officer. I was, as were my three sisters, raised on military bases. My oldest sister is married to my adored retired Air Force fighter-jock brother-in-law. Three of my nephews have served in the Iraq theater. My two sons don't qualify for service because of physical disabilities. And my middle daughter, in an 9/11 patriotic fervor, tried to join the Air Force but was rejected even though she scored the highest enlistment test score in Dallas for several years, because she had actually had in her past the nerve to consult a psychiatrist for mild depression. Though we opposed the Iraqi war and even shudder! the Vietnam "conflict," I think that The Sage and I qualify as "decent" Americans. We pay taxes, we've raised five good offspring, and we are devout Christians (not required for good citizenship).
I'm even an executive at a Fortune 200 company, surely an indicator by this administration's standards, as a "responsible" citizen.

Memorial Day means, to me, a time for honoring our armed services personnel, particularly those who have died in the service, for their sacrifice in defending our national security, our Constitution, and in general our American way of life. It is not an opportunity for deepening the partisan issues that divide us or for increasing, for no reason other than national hubris, the risks to those valiant men and women. It is long past time for us, as a nation, to formulate a plan that will bring our troops home from a conflict that has no real chance of resolving sectional and religious issues that we do not even understand, and that have no real relevance to our own security other than that our current and past activities have acted against it. Only in that way will we truly demonstrate a respect and value for our troops...by preserving their lives.