In the course of its history, this nation has sent a little more than 1.2 million men and women to their deaths in military service. Over 234 years, they have fought and died for causes noble and just and causes shameful and wrong; they have died for the birth of the republic and the continuation of the union, they have died to help William Randolph Hearst sell more newspapers, they have died to liberate the people of Europe, they have died to prop up or knock down petty dictators, and they have died to secure cheap oil for our insatiable gluttony. In all that time, not a one of them has died for your freedom, though many of them died to bring freedom to others.
How many acts of selfless heroism, of duty, of honor, of ultimate sacrifice must we continue to squander when they could be so better used? Each headstone on the hills of Arlington National Cemetery, or the fields of Normandy, or the graveyards that dot every city and town across America is a life that could have been so much better lived if left untouched by the hubris and greed of politicians and businessmen. Our remembrance does so little to fill the void left by so many losses, yet it is the one small act every person in this country should feel obligated to. Not out of thankfulness or pride, but out of atonement and out of the realization that so much was given for so little in return.
Bow your head and beg forgiveness from these crosses and stars and flags and flowers. Raise your voice, raise your fist, and vow that their deaths will not simply be a million precursors to a million more. Not until every soldier marches home, until there are no more flag-draped coffins to lower forever into the earth will the lives of the fallen have been given their due.
