Anger and sadness.

Our national nightmare is not over.

With all due respect, today is a day to honor all those who have lost their lives in defense of our way of life in this country. We should not be singling out any one conflict over any others to make political points. Today is a day we remember all who have gone before us to protect this nation whether it be the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, etc.

Today is about remembering and wondering where we would be without all the great men and women of the United States Armed Forces who have made the ulitimate sacrifice.

Tim and Pete,

Thank you for your comments and I hear what you are saying. I can only speak for how I am feeling today and that is how I am feeling and why.

-MN

Michelle, thanks for sharing the names of soldiers worth remembering. I'm puzzled by the comment that follows it, though.

Peter, you made my point exactly. Public announcements on Memorial Day are not about individual wars or lists of fallen soldiers from particular wars, but about all of our soldiers. ALL soldiers, no matter the time or the war, are worth remembering. That was my point.

Today is about all of them and not about drawing attention to the fact you oppose the war.

From President Bush's comments today, I'd say it is okay to use the current holiday to honor past wars AND contemplate present ones:

Yet even after five years of war, our finest citizens continue to answer our enemies with courage and confidence. Hundreds of thousands of patriots still raise their hands to serve their country; tens of thousands who have seen war on the battlefield volunteer to re-enlist...They know that one day this war will end -- as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it.

My views on a somber day of remembrance do not change based on the whim of the President or anybody else.

Yes, that is my thought exactly.

Send a copy of that list to Gordon Smith's office. He should be made aware of some of what was achieved from signing Bush's blank check for going to war.

Bill, your comments are exactly what is wrong with the extreme left of our party and the exact point I have been making all day. You could not just observe Memorial Day with remembering and honoring those who have gone before. Instead, you use the names of a few to make a political point. Memorial Day is about memorializing, not politicizing. Give it a rest on Memorial Day.

Early on every Memorial Day morning I visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with some of my veteran friends. We go up early to miss the traditional militaristic ceremonies and rhetoric, to honor our fallen brothers and sisters in arms quietly, for as General Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth President of the United States said, “The one thing I never want to see again is a military parade”.

We do not need the fly overs and taps. We don't need the 21 gun salute. The names are seared into our collective experiences and all we want is an end to the insanity of war. It is obsolete. War is the enemy.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [Branch of Government] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -James Madison 1795

Pete Forsyth posted, "Memorial Day is a time to contemplate and remember, not a time to draw conclusions." For me and my fellow Peace Veterans, we have already drawn our conclusions. It is stated simply by Rudyard Kipling, "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied."

The names on the walls of all the memorials throughout the land bear silent witness to the failure of war as a means of settling our differences. Have we not progressed beyond this? History is replete with examples of the failure of wars to bring about peace, yet war continues to be the first choice not the last. Abraham Lincoln said, “No order of society can last in which one man says to another, ‘You work and toil, and earn bread, and I will eat it’.” This is the basis for most wars, the idea that somehow the resources of another nation are for the taking by the powerful. It is theft and it is wrong.

The winners, it is said, write history. The winners feel the need to justify their brutality.

Veterans For Peace chapter 72 member, Mike Hastie, who served in Viet Nam as an Army medic, observed, “The reason people don't learn from the past, is because the past was a repetitious lie to begin with.” Until we get past the lies of the past and the lies being told to us now, we will never find our way on the path to peace. The truth must be our compass on that path however discomforting the truth may be.

Let us remember and bear witness to the truth of war, and end the black hole of war that sucks the resources of our nation and the world into a death spiral of unending cycles of violence that can only lead to the ruin of all.

Grant E. Remington President Emeritus Veterans For Peace Chapter 72 AKA BOHICA

Memorial Day is about memorializing, not politicizing. Give it a rest on Memorial Day.

What, are you the Memorial Day police, Tim. How much does that pay? Do you have to be elected?

If you don't like political statements on memorial Day, then don't make any. The rest of us are still free to speak our minds.

The best way to honor those who have fallen is to work to prevent more having to suffer the same fate.

Posted by: John Reinhold | May 29, 2007 10:58:53 AM

The best way to honor those who have fallen is to work to prevent more having to suffer the same fate.

Or as General Wesley K. Clark said;

"After all, the greatest way to honor our men and women in uniform is to require their sacrifice the least."

This is from the Washington Times yesterday, Paul Greenberg:

There is nothing we can do for the dead now, but there is much we can do for the living. We can ask where they are, and how they fare, and see that they, and their families, are cared for. And when they are stacked in hospitals like so much cordwood, put out of sight like something indecent, we can demand more than a few showy dismissals of those who were supposed to be in charge. We can ask, we can demand to know, what is being done for them and theirs. Now. For people do not live in some abstract realm -- like the past or in politicians' speeches or on the television screen -- but in the here and very now. In waiting rooms. In hospital wards. In veterans' homes.

There were many emotional calls on C-span yesterday morning. Here's one I used the Tivo to help me transcribe:

Johnson, RI Good morning. I believe that the way to honor our troops and the way we have honored all of our previous troops over all the wars that we have fought to liberate or protect our freedom is to replace the commander in chief and his henchmen. I was really really astonished when the Vice President of the United States addressed the [graduating cadets] and announced that honor, duty and loyalty were so important, and that the response was so great out of respect for the second in command. However, this is the same person, who, when it came for his time to honor, and to be loyal, and to serve our country with distinction, decided to take six leaves of absences* from Vietnam and the service as a the commander in chief did in abandoning his duties when he was in the National Guard. It is abysmal that we don't see our troops who are dying for us being returned in their caskets with the beautiful American flag, the symbol of their sacrifice, and they do so in the dead of night, so that we can go shop at Wal-Mart, according to Mr. George Bush. I believe that is an abomination. I salute the troops. I do not salute the Commander in Chief.

*I think it was actually 5 deferments - but still - not good for someone who has uber-politicized the issue of who supports the troops and who doesn't.

I will not be boxed into saying only what they want us to say, and how and when they want us to say it. I will not play by rules established by people who are so indecent that they are incapable of shame.

Thank you, Grant. You said it much better than I could ever hope to.

i refuse to be silent about my opposition to the immoral war in Iraq because some feel it is not "appropriate." My family members didn't die physically in Vietnam, but much of who they were died because of what happened and my father's death was very much a result of what happened in Vietnam. Families, American AND Iraqi, are being destroyed because of this war. The repercussions will last throughout the lives of those who are there now and through the lives of their children and even their grandchildren.

We, as Americans, MUST voice our opposition to this war. We must do so every day, including Memorial Day. In some respects, especially on Memorial Day.

Exactly.

We are going to have to get out of our comfort zones. Of course they will always have some reason that we should be silent - that's a key component of their propaganda campaign, and it's gone on too long.

we have the same name!! Spelled the same way!

Cheers!