Remember Them

Photo from Bowling Green Daily News

In a few weeks we will celebrate Memorial Day. My sister will unwinterize the pool and have the first backyard BBQ of the season. Littleprop and her cousins will have an all day massive waterballoon and water pistol and water cannon, and wet sponge launcher (well you get the idea) fight punctuated by brief interludes for hot dogs, hamburgers, and the odd handful of cheeze doodles.

The local American Legions and Veterans of Foreign Wars and Viet Nam Veterans groups will sponsor parades and block parties. There will be marching bands and military music concerts. There will be red paper poppies to remind us of the fields of France where so many American war dead were buried during WWI. We will remember our fallen heroes from wars long past. And eat ice cream.

Today, should be a day to remember our war dead from a war that is NOT long past. To remember the dead and soon to be dead in an ongoing war that ESCALATED AFTER the President declared victory.

Today is the FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of "Mission Accomplished."

Don't expect too many parades. Don't expect to see the US Marine Corps Band giving a concert on the Washington Mall or the White House Lawn. This Adminstration does not honor our dead children lost in an ongoing war which he has already declared won, despite all evidence to the contrary.

So, there is no holiday today. There are no parades, no concerts. The Congress has not declared this a day of remembrance for this Nation's dead sons and daughters.

But no one can stop us from remembering them, from honoring them, for acknowledging that they were willing to, and did, make the ultimate sacrifice that their patriotism inspired.  Tonight, at sunset, I'm putting a sign on my lawn, "Thank you to all our brave servicemembers lost since 'Mission Accomplished'" and lighting a candle in front of it. Maybe a small bouquet of flowers.

It is my hope that everyone who passes by and is reminded, will take a moment to say a prayer, or hold a good thought for the brave young men and women who fought and died in an unnecessary war of aggression started by a coward who used his Daddy's influence to hide out in the National Guard when there was real fighting to do in Viet Nam, and then went AWOL, just to rub salt in the wound.

Yet, John McCain thinks it's just swell to give us 4 more years of senseless war, let's see that will take us all the way to 9 years after "Mission Accomplished?" When is the MSM going to wake up to the fact that McCain is running on a platform to continue a war that is opposed by the vast majority of the American people? When is he going to get pounded with this anti-democratic, imperialist platform plank?

Starting tomorrow, the best and most sincere thing we can do to honor our fallen sons and daughters is to make sure that the press, the Congress and every person we meet is talking about the war. How bad it is going, how pointless it is, how much worse off we are for having started it, how we need to end it. How John McCain doesn't want to end it.

If we don't remember our dead children who died in the war of George Bush's convenience, no one will. If we don't save our still living children from the continuation of this pointless slaughter, no one will.  We must fight here at home, so our children don't have to fight far from home.