Memorial Day 2010-- Two Wars Roll On

Readers' Forum: May 31, 2010

The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — Our duty to remember on two fronts

Once again we honor the dead of our past wars, recognizing the sacrifices they made for all of us. This should always be job one over the Memorial Day weekend. Job two should be thinking about the dead and the sacrifices taking place in our two unending wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We get only random news blips from the media about these wars. Some say the bothersome war blips are telling us that “Americans are wearying of the wars” and that Obama is losing credibility on this issue.

Solemn celebrations are in order if these fleeting info bits are true. Of course, they are not.

Did this news come through to you last month?

Costs of the two wars: $1 trillion and counting ($60 billion added to the total just last week) and, more devastating, 1,000 brave Americans have now died in the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.

These two markers, menacing and dark monuments, were reached with barely a nod from the press. The public’s response? We choose to nod off, turn the page, grab for the remote, go shopping.

Faced with two wars of unending duration and astronomical costs in dollars, human life and physical and mental wreckage, what do we get from politicians, the press and the public? A muffled, static-filled silence. Our elected officials rubber stamped Bush’s arrogant folly and Obama’s sleep walking centrism takes us along the same bloody path to nowhere.

Our leaders think and act on what appears from every angle to be the people’s wishes — more guns and more sad glory at future Memorial Day remembrances.