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One hundred and thirty-three American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year.
Fighter pilot Captain Lance Sijan, a friend and Air Force Academy classmate of my father, was shot down over Vietnam in 1968 and died in captivity. His 1976 Medal of Honor citation reads in part: “Capt. Sijan ejected from his disabled aircraft and successfully evaded capture for more than six weeks. During this time, he was seriously injured and suffered from shock and extreme weight loss due to lack of food. After being captured by North Vietnamese soldiers, Capt. Sijan was taken to a holding point for subsequent transfer to a prisoner of war camp. In his emaciated and crippled condition, he overpowered one of his guards and crawled into the jungle, only to be recaptured after several hours.”
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
- William Butler Yeats
Sijan’s fiancée and relatives visited my family’s home shortly after the Medal of Honor Ceremony to attend an Air Force Academy dedication memorializing his life and death.
Joy and sadness mingled. Pictures, stories and varied talk of a handsome, square jawed young man emblazoned my six-year-old mind with an image that still inspires uneasy awe. There is a strange chemistry that surrounds the mourning of a hero. The country gains a mythic figure while the family suffers an intimate loss; but most troubling is the extinction of an individual life.
I am now ten years older than Sijan was when he died. I grew up occasionally imagining what his life was, what it would have been and how it ended. But his life, his reasons for fighting and the moment of his death are gone and unknowable. The honors, ceremonies and eulogies commemorating the fallen soldier are for the living – they do nothing for the dead.
What does it mean to honor the sacrifice of the dead? Four thousand and thirteen dead as of today. They all volunteered. I knew none of them.
My share in this sacrifice is entirely abstract. Outrage, disgust and guilt are not sacrifice. There is no real world fact of my existence that demands a suffering over this war. It requires a deliberate act, something like prayer or meditation, to even approach the idea of how some are suffering. I can choose to suffer in sympathy – and this is not suffering. Maybe we have found what all nations secretly dream of – the spoils of victory without the pain of war.
Each of our 4,013 Iraqi War Dead held private beliefs, joys and dreads – all different, all gone and forever unknowable. In dying for us, in dying for our country, in dying for adventure, in dying for democracy, in dying for Iraq, in dying for peace or in dying for their fellow soldiers – their deaths are individual. The majority of Americans carry no burden in this war; we are a country capable of only imagining the lives of our individual soldiers. But they are only when they cease to exist. It is the frail mystery of the individual life that needs greater honoring.
- Citizen Voices blogger Chris McConnell is a bookseller, freelance writer, former high school English teacher and odd jobber who lives in La Jolla.
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Chris,
For the last five years we have witnessed the sad spectacle of Bush’s calculated rush into war. I am breathless with the enormous cost to our collective souls. Whether one was in support George Bush or can not stand the sound of his voice, the fact remains that the terrible loss of life on both sides is only part of the tragedy. Every child of this conflict will carry the weight of this nightmare for the rest of their lives. The disastrous cost to the families of the slain and maimed is incalculable. And yes, each individual life needs honoring, not as some faceless statistic but for all they were and could have been.
The 4,013 Iraqi War Dead are true tragedies. They are tragedies for their families and friends and even for us, complete strangers yet fellow citizens and residents of this country.
Yet, at the same time, these past five years has also produced roughly 7.5 million abortions here in the United States. These deaths are no less tragic, not only to their families, but even to us strangers, since, as taxpayers, we have paid the abortion industry to murder these people. Yet, which one does folks like Candace cry out about: 4,013 dead in Iraq or the 7.5 million murdered in the United States by the abortion industry? You tell me.
I’m sorry Matthew,
Your name alone tells me that you are not a woman and will never comprehend that a woman must have sovereignty over her body. Nor will you ever be a mother, so you can never understand the bond between a mother and her nursing child, or the cost of the loss. So actually, you do not get a vote.
Candace
@Candace, if that be the case, then you should oppose Roe v. Wade as much as I do. After all, it was seven men who voted for it.
So I take it you don’t care about the 7.5 million babies murdered in this country, is that right?
Firstly, abortion has nothing to do with anything this article is writing about.
Secondly, the mere fact that you connect both of these events, highlights that you are the kind of person that allowed this war to happen in the first place. The kind of person that took the word of the USG when it began to connect Al Qaeda and Iraq, two seemingly unrelated issues.
Thirdly and more importantly, it is also important to realize that are considerably more Iraqi deaths that are never reported in America at least (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7374948.stm).
Further Matthew I’m sure you could move to any undeveloped nation where Abortion is illegal and surround yourself amongst 17th century thinkers like yourself.
@Juan Ruiz, the 17th Century was the Age of the Enlightenment. If that were intended to be an insult, that would be a swing and a miss.
Maybe I’ll type slowly this time so you can understand me better. At the same time that we have had 4,013 Iraqi War dead in some foreign land, we have had 7.5 million people murdered by the abortion, and the same people who are complaining about the atrocity of Iraqi war dead, be it the 4013 Iraqi recorded or some largerr number reported by the BBC, do nothing to stop the murders here at home.
Now, I could make some polemic screed about “the kind of person” who would murder babies at home and call for peace abroad, but, as a “17th century thinker,” I am just too smart to fall into that trap.