The Only Things You Should Read On Memorial Day

• Andrew J. Bacevich offers an example of the lost art of elegy, writing a paean to his son, who died in Iraq this month. Bacevich, an anti-war conservative, repeats his arguments against the war in the context of his son's honorable service. It's an angry letter, but one that perfectly expresses what we all feel these days:

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me. [...]

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. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent. [...]

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

It's hard to argue with any of this, depressing and yet piercingly true.

• If you want news of how the occupation of Iraq is making us less safe, read this about the disillusionment of our GIs, who are tired of seeing Iraqi recruits turn into foes, training those that end up trying to kill them later.

The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.” [...]

“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”

• Or you can take a look at its impact on international affairs, and how Iraq has become Terrorist U.

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. […]

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

• If you want to know how those benchmarks are going, the answer is not so much:

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that member of parliament Husain al-Falluji of the Iraqi Accord Front [Sunni fundamentalist] said Friday that the IAF would never approve the new petroleum law until the constitution is first amended. He said that the party has made a firm decision in this regard.

The Sunnis won't allow an oil law without promised changes to the constitution. The Shiites won't allow any changes to the constitution that gives any more power of theirs to the Sunnis.

Welcome to Iraq!

• If you want to ruminate on the question of who supports the troops, read this:

While President Bush has been busy politically demagoging funding for the troops, CBS Evening News highlighted a disturbing report tonight that the administration waited over a year before acting on a “priority 1 urgent” request to send blast-resistant vehicles to Iraq, the so-called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.

Calling it “an outrageous delay,” CBS noted, “The Marines in the field asked for 1,200 MRAPs in February 2005 — but so far, they’ve received less than 100.” The report also noted that the problem is widespread and systemic [...]

In an open letter to President Bush, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) urged the administration to publicly make MRAP production a national priority. He wrote, “How is it possible that with our nation at war, with more than 130,000 Americans in danger, with roadside bombs destroying a growing number of lives and limbs, we were so slow to act to protect our troops? … We need to know how and why this happened so that it does not happen again.”

These vehicles would save the lives of the large percentages of those who die in roadside bomb attacks. During WWII we made a tank a week in this country. We mobilized for the war effort. Today we are comically ignorant of the needs of the soldiers to the point of not caring at all.

• Or if you want to just turn this day over to the soldiers, and think on how their lives were snuffed out in a failed occupation, you can read about the eight that perished over the weekend. Or the faces of all the fallen since the beginning of hostilities.

It's a lot of reading and it's the least you can do.