Our obligation

This weekend saw many ceremonies honoring our dead soldiers. Andrew Bacevich, whose son died in Iraq, thinks we need to do more than acknowledge their sacrifice. We need to hold our leaders accountable. Were the post-911 wars worth it? 

Bacevich says,"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." 

His conclusion, "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. 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."