http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/05/american_legion.htmlThis was reprinted in my local paper and I started to prepare a response. Then I realized that Kansas would vote Republican even if Dick Cheney was running against Kathleen Sebelius. Still, for the rest of the country, here is a partial response.
It is the Legion Commander who has dishonored Memorial Day in my view by using it, and his position, to attack Edwards. That's far more partisan than opposing a war.
Second, has he ever attacked Bush for politicizing Memorial Day? In Bush's recent radio address he talked about Memorial Day. Yet he also felt it appropriate to push his 'stay the course' 'strategy' - "On Memorial Day we rededicate ourselves to freedom's cause. In Iraq and Afghanistan, millions have shown their desire to be free. We are determined to help them secure their liberty..."
If politicizing Memorial Day is some kind of sacrilege, then Bush is clearly guilty. Not only that, but unlike Edwards, if we follow Bush, it is guaranteed that we will have even more soldiers to mourn next year and the year after that. Last year, when 1,000 of our soldiers were still alive, Bush spoke on Memorial Day:
"Our nation mourns the loss of our men and women in uniform; we will honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives - by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty, and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans."
Of course, we will somehow do all of this by continuing and escalating the war which he himself lied us into. Bush has not forgotten the lesson of 1984, that peace is war. In 2002, before he invaded Iraq, Bush spoke at Normandy. He said:
"For some military families in America and Europe, the grief is recent, with the losses we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that the cause is just and like other generations, these sacrifices have spared many others from tyranny and sorrow."
By invading Iraq ten months later based on his own and his administrations dishonest claims of WMD that were not there, Bush has guaranteed that those who lose loved ones in Iraq will face the further loss of knowing that they died for lies and that their sacrifices have created great misery and destruction in Iraq. Bush has dishonored our country and our troops and Memorial day causing the deaths of almost 3,500 and counting the wounding of over 30,000 and the deaths of perhaps half a million Iraqis. That is what the commander of the American Legion and all Americans should be sickened by. Not by the actions of Edwards and others who would attempt to move that dishonest and heartless petty tyrant from a course which is a proven disaster.
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