Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Memorial Day Reflections

Yesterday I spent a fair bit of time reading Frederick Douglass' Memorial Day speeches from both 1871 in Arlington National Cemetery and 1878 in Union Square, New York City. In both instances Mr. Douglass honored the fallen Union and Confederate soldiers while reminding the audience, in no uncertain terms, that there was a right and a wrong side to that conflict.

What also struck me, while reading up on the origins of the holiday, is that this is not a celebration of our troops (that's Veteran's Day), but a remembrance of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. It used to be called Decoration Day, because communities would decorate the graves of those killed in battle. The tradition began, improbably, just a year or so after the Civil War ended in Charleston, SC, of all places, when former slaves honored the Union dead from a prison camp in the city's racetrack. The holiday did a lot to heal wounds between the North and South, but was also used by some, like Frederick Douglass, to remind the country that while brave men fought and died for their country, they did not always die for a just cause.

This lead me to reflect on U.S. military action over the past decade. Trillions of dollars, thousands of dead Americans, tens of thousands of dead Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and to what end? We have a struggling democracy in Iraq. We have nothing resembling a coherent endgame in Afghanistan. We're running shadow wars in Pakistan and Yemen. We're now aiding in the bombing of Libya.

And yet without our help, revolution sprang up in a half dozen other Arab countries all on their own, toppling the leadership in Tunisia & Egypt with other regimes teetering on the brink. Unfortunately, we're poorly positioned to spread democracy in these countries, because we're probably the least trusted foreign power in the Arab world - well, after Israel I suppose.

I don't normally delve into foreign policy on this blog. There's good reason. It's far too complex for easy digestion. I don't always know the correct course of action. I assume our government is acting on intelligence beyond that available from the press. And yet I still hope that we make diplomatic and military decisions that stand up to the light of a just cause.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time seeing that in much of the action we've taken over the past decade. I had hoped President Obama would help us reverse course, and while he's ended the war in Iraq, he's doubled down on Afghanistan and has increased the number of drone strikes in other countries. Even before the moral issues come into play, the cost in blood and treasure is too high to warrant poorly justified aggression toward other countries.

We can do better. We must do better.