Your Deaths Were Not in Vain

by Sayre Sheldon, WAND president emerita

To the over three hundred U.S.soldiers who have died in Iraq so far in the “surge”—the highest casualties for a three month period in the war: we owe you so much.

   You have not “brought freedom” to the people of Iraq—from what we can learn here at home, their suffering is if anything greater than ever.

   You have not “made us safer” here at home because throughout the world the number of people who want to harm us grows and grows.

   You have not killed or captured enough of “the enemy” because more seem to take their place every day.

   No, but you cannot be blamed for not carrying out these impossible missions. The policy-makers who sent you to Iraq are to blame for what you failed to do. They sent you in insufficient numbers, without adequate protection, into the hell of a civil war that they themselves caused.

   No, and we as citizens cannot escape our responsibility for not questioning our politicians and press when they told us that invading Iraq was the logical next step in the “war on terror” and that the invasion would be over in a few months

   No, our debt to you is that your deaths may at last have aroused the American people to act and our representatives in Congress to say “enough!” You may have saved some of the two thousand more American soldiers that will surely die if our president gets his way and keeps the war going until he is out of office. Because of you tens of thousands may get to come back without grievous wounds in body and mind.

   We at home know how bravely and unselfishly you acted to save your fellow soldiers when you were alive. We know how you went out every day up to face snipers and roadside bombs and ambushes. We know how you dragged the shattered bodies of your friends out of burning vehicles. We know how you honored and mourned your fallen companions.

   Now it is our turn to honor you along with all the others who died before you in a war that should never have been fought and can never be won. You did not give up your lives for those who sent you to war—those who plan their wars in air-conditioned offices, and go home to their families every night--those who have always had “other priorities” than fighting. You gave your lives for those you served with. Your goals were to bring them home unhurt, and someday to get back to your own families. You didn’t get back but you may have saved many more than you can ever know.

   It is up to us now here at home to carry on your real mission—to get as many U.S. soldiers safely out of Iraq as soon as we can.