I was just listening to Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best of Our Knowledge, a great podcast/radio show (if you can get it in your area) that takes an hour each week to examine topics from whether Shakespeare is still relevant to high energy physics to something as “simple” as salt. And they make it astonishingly interesting. Like to the point where you wonder how you every went without knowing an HOUR’s worth of information about… well… salt.
They have a recent series of hours called “Boots on the Ground: Stories from the war in Iraq.” The episode I am on is called “Coming Home.” As yesterday was memorial day, I wanted to share a particularly poignant excerpt of an impassioned email from an Army Sergeant named John McCary as read on that show by its author.
Please take the five minutes to listen to him.
I hope that you will have a much more visceral understanding of why days like yesterday are important to honor, regardless of your particular view of whether we should have stepped foot inside that country to begin with. It is not a day for honoring politicians or war mongers, but of honoring young men and women that put their safety and comfort aside for the very real need that any country has (like it or not – for the time being) to defend itself or others. They knowingly put their future and welfare into the imperfect hands of our politicians. And whether you agree with the decisions of those politicians, that sacrifice of the soldiers, especially those that do not return, can only be described as honorable.
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