The Supreme Sacrifice

Today I read about an American soldier killed while saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. His sacrifice was called the supreme sacrifice. And it was in so far as he gave his life so that his fellow soldiers could live. However, the problem with talking this way is that it is intended to somehow sanction through personal sacrifice the destruction of Iraq and its people and to remove from soldiers their responsibility in that destruction.

The sister of this soldier said that her brother was a man “solid in his beliefs but one who didn’t preach patriotism.” I find that to be a very vague sentiment for being willing to participate in an immoral and illegal war that has accomplished nothing other than death, injury, destruction, and the waste of vital American resources.

Patriotism has nothing to do with the war in Iraq unless being patriotic means doing whatever your demented president wants you to. Certainly, the soldiers who served Hitler were patriotic and often heroic, but that is beside the point. They served evil and by doing so became the instrument of evil.

The fact is this soldier died in the service of evil (George W. Bush), which is not to say his action was unheroic. It wasn’t. However, had he been stationed on the American border with Mexico protecting Americans from the thousands of illegal aliens who invade this country each day, then he would have served a genuinely patriotic good: protecting America from invaders.

As is, he served only empty abstractions that came out of the mouths of petty politicians. There is no doubt in my mind that this soldier was a human being of far greater worth than those who sent him to Iraq and wasted his life on their nefarious schemes.

And now we hear Senator McCain saying that we are morally obligated to remain in Iraq because “a precipitous withdrawal could unleash sectarian tensions--leading to a full scale civil war that could destabilize the Middle East.” Well he should have thought about that before voting in favor of the war and wasting billions of taxpayers’ dollars and the lives of those who sought to serve the good, not the twisted ambitions of the evil men such as McCain and his commander in chief. But that would be expecting too much from a man who participated in a war that killed 2 million plus Vietnamese.

The sad fact is beyond saving the lives of his comrades, this hero died for nothing, or worse, for evil, and the family should be mad as hell at the U.S. Government for betraying them and their son.