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OPINION | ANDREW J. BACEVICH

While remembering our soldiers, we must also learn

Members of the Old Guard placed flags in front of every headstone at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday.Susan Walsh/AP

Last Friday, my wife and I attended the dedication of the “Fallen Heroes Memorial,” as it was our duty to do. Located in the booming Seaport District, the memorial honors the more than 200 men and women of the Commonwealth who have lost their lives in our post-9/11 wars.

The ceremonies marking the occasion were very long, unquestionably heartfelt, and at times stirring. They were also fastidiously sanitized and therefore disingenuous — comforting, but also misleading.

Amidst much pomp — martial music played, colors presented, prayers offered, salutes fired, wreathes laid, and dignitaries trooping to the podium — the actual wars that claimed the lives of those being remembered received next to no attention.

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The various speakers thanked all those who serve, thanked the Gold Star families present, and thanked those had conceived of the project along with those whose tenacity and generosity had brought it to fruition. They cited the memorial itself as tangible evidence of the gratitude felt by the people of Massachusetts, and by extension the nation as a whole, for the sacrifices of those who had died. They reminded those in attendance that “Freedom isn’t free,” a slogan no more helpful to understanding America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than “These colors don’t run” was to understanding Vietnam.

Of the many words spoken at the event, none touched on the origins, conduct, and outcomes of our post-9/11 wars. Those conflicts, the longest in US history, have exacted a terrible price without yielding anything even remotely approximating success. For proof, look no further than current conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then tally up the moral and material costs incurred since US forces first intervened in those countries. That the war against Iraq, innocent of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks, was also patently unnecessary only makes the results that much more mournful.

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The featured speaker at the proceedings was General John F. Kelly, a former Marine whose son, also a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan. His son’s death prompted General Kelly to ponder this question: Was the war that had taken his son’s life “worth it”? Upon reflection he concluded that only those making the supreme sacrifice were qualified to address that question — with their sacrifice itself providing a definitive answer. By dying for a cause, they invest that cause with value.

By implication, our responsibility, rising to the level of solemn obligation, is to affirm that judgment. With all due respect, that strikes me as a cop-out. Our obligation, transcending even our duty to remember those we have lost, is to insist upon accountability.

In that regard, the American people are failing abysmally. Indeed, the studied solemnity of last Friday’s ceremonies — gingerly steering clear of anything even remotely controversial — offers further evidence of that failure.

Our soldiers may have died for their country. But they went to war at the behest of the state, pursuant to decisions made by civilian authorities in Washington, waging campaigns designed and directed by senior military officers.

That accounting should begin with an acknowledgment of the grievous lapses in leadership that have marred recent American wars. To avert our eyes from evidence of duplicity, recklessness, and incompetence at the top is tantamount to betraying those who have borne the burden of the fight.

Much the same can be said of the assumptions and ambitions underlying the policies that find the United States today more or less permanently at war. They require critical scrutiny.

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We must never forget those who gave their all while in service to the nation. But remembering requires more than unveiling monuments while offering words of consolation. It requires truth-telling, however painful or discomfiting. While remembering, in other words, we must also learn. Otherwise the expenditure of young American lives to no discernible purpose will continue.


Andrew J. Bacevich is author of “America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.’’ On May 13, 2007, his son, First Lieutenant Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq.