a G.I.'s life is priceless

"An image haunts me:
proceeding across a battlefield,
my father now dead,
I am up front to draw the fire.
I look back,
and one of those I was to protect has fallen."

The above is for Andrew Bacevich. It's okay. It will never be okay. They were only here for the time we had them. Thank GOD we know how to live so none of it was wasted. (thinking of you)

From Andrew Bacevich: (see my below post for the rest of this)

He received letters blaming him and his anti-war writing for his death. He writes, "This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war."

WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRACY IS THIS?'
A GRIEVING FATHER WANTS TO KNOW

By: Justin Raimondo
The family of Andrew Bacevich, a 27-year-old first lieutenant who was recently killed in an ambush north of Baghdad, doesn't want to see its beloved son and brother turned into an impersonal symbol of a tragic and unnecessary war: they want him to be remembered as a special person, "a great-looking kid with an infectious smile," as one of his close friends put it at his funeral service.

He was, by all accounts, a unique man of many talents, who aspired to join the Army in spite of restrictions against asthma sufferers. Young Bacevich was forced to leave ROTC at Boston University because of this, but he worked hard to stay in shape and ran the Boston Marathon in 3 hours and 35 minutes. After graduating from BU in 2003, he worked as an aide to a state Republican legislator, and in 2004 he became a legislative liaison and analyst on the staff of Gov. Mitt Romney.

He finally achieved his dream of serving his country when the asthma restrictions were relaxed. He joined in 2005 as a private and was admitted to Officers Candidate School – which he knew would mean deployment to Iraq in very short order. He went in October and led a platoon in the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division.

He was, by all accounts, anything but a tragic figure, full of the life-force and an inspiration and joy to those who knew him. Yet this very quality underscores the tragedy of his demise and inevitably leads us to raise the questions his father, Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam and now teaches at Boston University, asked in an interview with National Public Radio: "One of the things that I've been really struggling with over the last several days is to try to understand my responsibility for my own son's death."

Bacevich, a prominent conservative critic of the war who has deemed the invasion "a catastrophic failure," thought his responsibility was to voice his opposition to the war, but, he asks:

"What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?"

It is a question that needs to be addressed to the leadership of both parties, not only the Republicans – particularly Mitt "Two, Three, Many Guantanamos" Romney – but also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check

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