Dying in vain?

Today is Memorial Day, the United States’ celebration of the brave men and women who over the years have fallen in combat. Without a question, many of these soldiers have died for some great and worthwhile causes, like Europe’s liberation during World War I and World War II and during the Battle of the Pacific. All of us must be grateful that their gift of life has been behind our continued freedom and prosperity. Not all wars can claim the same virtues and usefulness.

Vietnam first comes to mind as those questionable endeavors. Did those who fell in Indochina filled a pressing need for freedom and happiness, or where they used by paranoid politicians who wanted to allay their fears of world-wide communist expansion or even by the much decried military-industrial complex? These questions are still debated today. The first Gulf War was decidedly what should be termed as an “oil war.” It made a point, but was not truly necessary outside of securing “Big Oil’s” interests. Thank God, it didn't cause too many troop casualties.

The U.S. engagement into Afghanistan was justifiable as the logical response to the 9/11 attacks, and if one point should be made about that conflict is that the invasion was not prosecuted as well as it should have been; America’s eye was obviously taken of the Taliban ball by the Iraq war. By now, most intelligent folks agree that this current war, whether it was a second “oil war” or not, was ill-conceived, poorly planned and totally unjustified.

As President Bush keeps digging in his heels, this war of occupation goes against what logic would dictate, both in the Iraqis and American best interests. Sure, the administration and the military establishment are using semantic to re-brand as “al-Qaeda” the various ethnic and religious groups fueling the Iraqi civil war, when in fact the incarnation of that terrorist group was mostly crushed when the allied forces invaded Afghanistan.

Both al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are therefore “recycled” and revived by the Administration’s fear mongers who absolutely need that pretense to justify and carry on their presence in Iraq. With that in mind, and if we have to be brutally sincere and honest, those American soldiers that die each day in Iraq are most definitely dying in vain.