Published 6/6/2005 12:09:07 AM On the Saturday night before Memorial Day, the cost of the war on terrorism were wearing red T-shirts. They were in a small ballroom on the second floor of the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel in Northern Virginia, within sight of the Pentagon. There were about 250 of them. Children of men and women who had been killed in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and in training. They were maybe from age five to fifteen. They were handsome. They were pretty. They were cute. They had haunted eyes, some of them, and some of them cried. One family had five kids, and the oldest, a beautiful 15-year-old girl, could not stop crying. They were being watched over by about thirty mentors, who were good-looking men and women from the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Army Honor Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. They serve as mentors and guides for the kids as the kids mourn their loss. The kids had just gotten back from a field trip and were in a giddy, but still haunted mood, as they ate pizza. I spoke to them, hugged them, smeared my tears away as I could. I told them how pretty they were if they were girls and how brave and handsome they looked if they were boys. A spectacularly cute little red-headed girl named Dawn slithered around me and pretended to be a dog to be patted. Or is it petted? I told the kids their parents had died to save this country, to give kids in Iraq and Afghanistan the chance to choose their lives and to have the freedoms we take for granted. I told them there were not enough words in the English language to thank them enough for what they had done. For the sacrifice they had made. I told them their fathers and mothers had died doing God's work. Then I signed autographs, mostly on the kids' T- shirts for about an hour. I WISH I WERE ELOQUENT enough to tell you how brave these kids were and what a price they are paying. To lose a father while the rest of us complain about taxes and the stock market and the price of real estate. Quite a sight. Quite a concept. How can we possibly repay them? How conceivably? There is nothing we can do. But be grateful and keep them in our hearts forever. I walked with my friend Marina Malenic, ace in WMD, to a far larger ballroom, where the widows, mothers and fathers, fiancees, widowers maybe, of the men and women who were killed were gathered. I sat with the head of the great organization, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, Bonnie Carroll, who conceived of TAPS when her AF general husband was killed in training in Alaska many years ago. Maybe it was 1998. She is a pretty, extremely smart woman, with a heart as big as a Cadillac. We sat also with several women who had lost their husbands. They were all brave, all sharing their experience, strength, and hope with each other. One woman next to me said I did not need to feel sorry for her on the death of her husband in the Mosul bombing. "I got to live with him for 22 years," she said. "I was blessed." Everyone there wore a button with a photo of the man who had died. The men looked impossibly healthy, fit, optimistic. They could not possibly be dead, and yet they were. Several wives spoke of their last talks with their husbands, about what it was like when the Chaplain came up the driveway. Some read letters from their husbands talking about how happy they were to be helping the Iraqi children. Bonnie spoke, perhaps the most moving speech I have ever heard in person, a difficult act to follow. She used to work with Reagan and maybe that explains her amazing ability to get in touch with truth. Then I spoke and gave a little talk about how we could live without the stock market, could get on without Hollywood or new cars, but could not last a week without our armed forces and the armed forces could not last a week without the military family. "To most," I said, "the war on terrorism is an abstraction. But there is blood all over this room." They gave me one standing ovation after another and I left the stage dizzy with gratitude. These women -- overwhelmingly women -- are paying a fearful price so the rest of us can get on with our daily selfishness and greed without hindrance. So that the witches of Beverly Hills and Fifth Avenue can go on with their shopping, these women lost their husbands. Mothers and fathers were there, too. One came up to me, a crusty couple, husband a Marine, and showed me a dollar bill from his late son's wallet when the son was killed in Iraq. The edges were covered in blood. HOW CAN WE THANK these families? How can we possibly praise enough the sacrifice they and their husbands have made? How can it ever be enough? Yet, they have something the rest of us rarely have: meaning. They know why God put them on earth, why they live and suffer. They never doubt their worth. Bonnie drove Marina and me back to The Watergate. I felt as if I had been with the finest people on earth that night, the ones in God's image. Mostly, I see the dregs of human selfishness. When I am around the military -- the Honor Guard, the families, the kids, the parents, the ones who are the thin line between life and death for freedom, the ones who make our lives worth living, I have hope for the human spirit. The best of the human spirit is alive and well inside those red T-shirts. http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8261 by Ben Stein
I understand the sentiment here, and I agree that these folks have sacrificed. I'm just sad that in the case of Iraq it had zero to do with whether or not we could still shop. That was never ever a threat from Iraq. It is ashame because of one administration's midguided warlust these people lost their husbands and fathers.
There is no war on terrorism. There is only a war on fundamentalist Islam that, unfortunately for the US, over half of the world views as a war on all of Islam. Discuss.
The real irony here is that you find very few people like those in the sory who have really suffered who would share your specific sentment of regret
Sadly, at the picnic you won't find the sons, daughters or relatives of the folks in the White HOuse, who brought us this unnecessary war. They will never have any relatives killed in the unnecessary war in Afghanistan and Iraq that they put these working class kids' parents into. Maybe if the chickenhawks in the White HOuse at least attended this type of picnic they would think twice about unnecessary war.
<b>URGENT MEMO TO GLYNCH:</B> The draft ended in the early 1970s. Check your encyclopedia for details--- even the ones in print. Thank you.
I don't find that ironic at all. They need to believe that it was for the most noble cause they can. It makes the death that much easier to deal with. Of course it isn't easy no matter what. But many of those that died believed they were fighting for freedom in the U.S. That was the job they signed up for, and believed them. The sad thing is that someone changed the job on them after they started. But because they believed it, it is only natural that their families would believe it. In both cases I think the people need to believe it.
Granted..... but the sentiment was there before death, too. The job of the soldier never changed. Some maybe chose to ignore the risk or pretend the risk didn't exist. You are exhibiting one of the quintessenial annoying characteristics of Liberalism (and it pains me to say this because you seem like a very nice, earnest guy whom anyone would be lucky to call a friend): in a broad, sweeping way you think you know what is better for someone than that person themself knows.
Like Medical mar1juana? Or Gay people getting married? Or gay people being foster parents? Look in the mirror Giddy. "Your side" does the same damn thing.
The job did change. They were supposed to defend our nation. When they went into Iraq it wasn't about defense of our nation. The U.S. wasn't in danger from Iraq. Honestly I don't know much, but I do feel that I know better than anyone who looks at the facts and says that invading Iraq protected the U.S. so that folks could still feel free to shop. The reason I feel I know better than someone who believes otherwise isn't because of my own arrogance, or superior attitude. It is because other military, intel agencies, weapons inspectors, and people who studied the situation also believed that. Then evidence comes to light that GWB fixed intel to say otherwise, CHeney, and Rice are cuaght lying about the war, doesn't bolster their side's arguments. People like Kaye who were appointed by Bush, and a supporter of the war came to the same conclusion I've reached about the threat posed by Iraq. Those of us on 5th ave, or Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills weren't ever in danger. If I believe that 2+2 = 4. I will feel that I know better than someone who tells me it equals 3. I allowed for a long time that I might be wrong in the belief that we were in danger, but the reports and facts are finally in, and we weren't. Some may need to believe that we were, and that is up to them. The facts just don't agree.
There are complex problems that have all kind of implications (legal, health, institutional) and then there is just tying to think for somebody because you think that their thinking is faulty. BTW, I'm all for gay marriage and medical mar1juana. I'm not so sure about the foster parenting, though. Now what side am I on again?
Ever hear of 9/11? We were and we are in danger. It is a question of how ripe the danger is. President Bush chose to take an aggressive plan of action to the rout out the terrorists before they could organize and strike again. We have had no further attacks on US soil. Are you saying that there has been nothing to fear or to prevent? Somehow I have a feeling that you and I don't have all the facts.
that's right there is nothing to fear.....al-queida was nothing.....that's the scary part for the U.S...that an organization that small was able to hit the U.S....that is why the war on teorrorism is soo big...so nobody big or small can repeat such an event..
Very moving story. I oppose the invasion of Iraq but support the troops. They are sent there on the order of civilian leadership so my disagreement is with that leaderhip.
This part stand out about the story though and makes me suspicious that Ben Stein wrote this. Remember when the President said it was patriotic for us to keep shopping. Ben Stein is a very intelligent guy and I have a hard time thinking he would make a comment like this when as a conservative supporter of the president he would be aware of this. Also didn't Ben Stein used to be an economist and particularly a supply sider? I find it hard to believe that Ben Stein would engage in this kind of class warfare rhetoric in this sort of situation.
Even if some soldiers don't agree with Bush's policy, they're expected to follow orders and shut their traps about that issue to the public. So no one really knows how much of that sentiment is prevalent inside the lower levels of the military. For better or worse, they're witnessing Bush's decisions first hand in the battlefield. That's something we won't have a picture of until many decades later.
This seems like very specious reasoning. Between 1993 and 2001 there were no foriegn launched terrorists attacks on the US so in 1995 would you have said that the Clinton Admin. had successfully contained Islamic terrorism? You're right that we don't know all the facts which is why I would argue for caution. Yes, you're right the invasion of Iraq was an aggressive move but one that is being shown to be more and more questionable and one that has costs the lives of many of the people that this thread is about. While we rightfully should honor these men and women for sacrificing their lives to fulfill their duty but how much does and Admin. respect the value of those lives by sending them out based on questionable intelligence, rumors and paranoia driven speculation.
Just curious to know if anybody or some government agency (IRS for instance) tracks how much, if any, of proceeds from selling those "support our troops" magnet ribbons have actually gone on to supporting the troops.
