Center for a New American Security

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon (1914)

I can't be sure, of course, but I would guess my readership is pretty near the last group of U.S. readers on the internet who need to be reminded of this day and what it means. For our readers outside the United States, today is Memorial Day -- a day when we remember those who have fallen on the field of battle. Again, I suspect my readers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, etc. are more likely to know men and women who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan than the average reader browsing espn.go.com to check out news from the NBA playoffs this morning.

Many thanks to all of our readers who have served the allied nations in combat, and especial thanks to those who have sacrificed in blood.

This morning, a few articles of note caught my eye. The first was this article on civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we accord them the same honor we extend to servicemen?

But don't expect President Obama to remember or thank the contractor personnel who died supporting our troops or diplomatic missions. Instead, expect to see contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be portrayed as expendable profiteers, adventure seekers or marginalized members of society who are not entitled to the same respect or value given to members of the military.

While I agree that contractors are often subjected to cartoonish stereotypes like the ones mentioned above, I respectfully disagree on the question of whether or not they should be accorded the same respect given to our fallen servicemen. Contractors are active not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but all over the world in environments where the U.S. military is not present. They often work for large, transnational corporations which negotiate contracts to provide certain services and then reimburse their workers with financial incentives in league with the difficulty and danger of those services. While contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan may be great patriots (and are often veterans themselves), they find themselves conducting operations there and elsewhere working for for-profit corperations. That's a lot different than a kid in 2-22nd Infantry on patrol in Paktia Province or wherever. So, sorry -- circumstances matter. And while the U.S. military cannot do its job without the support -- especially the logistical and engineering support -- provided by expeditionary contractors like KBR and Bechtel, those individual contractors should not be honored in the same way we honor our nation's fallen soldiers and sailors.

Second, Paul Farnan has a nice apology (in the classical sense of the word) for General David McKiernan:

Over the past year, I have seen our focus in Afghanistan shift from kinetic military operations to one of engaging the population, building the capacity of the Afghan government, and ensuring that the military's top priority is the training and mentoring of the Afghan army and police. Integrated strategic planning with the United Nations and the Afghan government is now the rule rather than the exception, as it was when McKiernan arrived last June. The general has traveled around the country and has held countless forums, known as shuras, with Afghans in various localities. He has engaged local and provincial leaders one on one to hear their concerns and ensure that they understood the intentions of the international coalition. All of our Special Forces operations combined cannot win the support of the Afghan people the way these shuras do. [AM: And to whom is that remark directed toward?] ...

This struggle is not about killing insurgents. We have killed more insurgents than we can count over the past seven years and have moved no closer to victory by doing so. This struggle is about the Afghan population. Afghans must believe that their government will provide them greater security and opportunity for prosperity than the insurgency will. We are not naive; we know that military operations must continue and that some people must be killed -- but under McKiernan a more holistic approach to winning the peace has been our focus.

This is great, if it is true, and I have no reason not to believe Mr. Farnan. As my readership has heard me say on this blog and on various mainstream media, a perception had grown that McKiernan did not "get" counterinsurgency warfare. This may be unfair. And again, as I said on NPR and the Rachel Maddow Show and elsewhere, it appears as if General McKiernan was not so much a bad general -- he actually seems to have been quite competent -- as just not the right guy for the specific job. Or maybe not the guy that Secretary Gates and General Petraeus felt would either win the war as fast as they needed to see progress toward that end or with whom they did not feel as comfortable working as with General McChrystal. I don't know. But I do know this: as excited as I was and am to see a real sense of urgency about Afghanistan, and as excited I was to see a certain ruthlessness in President Obama, Secretary Gates, and General Petraeus, I also have a tinge of sadness: General McKiernan was hard done by, and I think the U.S. Army officer corps and most commenters recognize that unless he was guilty of some kind of insubordination we do not know about, then his relief could have been handled in classier way by all parties.

Memorial Day is for most Americans a long weekend in which, but for the occasional story on World War II and the liberation of France, there is little thought of what it is we ought be memorializing or why.

For me, it has become a somber, annual reminder of friends and familiars lost too young--of others still recovering from wounds that will serve as a reminder of wars which they are not afforded the luxury to forget. I think of Lenny Cowherd, who wrote his West Point history thesis on the Muslim Brotherhood, the first contemporary I knew well to die in Iraq--the first one who's death could not be undone by resetting MILES gear. Lenny was extended due to our inability to anticipate the Shiite uprising in Najaf. He left behind a young bride to whom he had been married less than a year.

I remember Andy Stern, a Marine forced to endure Army training who really believed that an Abrams could swim because the US Marine Corps told him it was so.

I think of another who sits today in a hospital with the question unanswered as to whether he will awake from his IED-induced coma. Another will never fully recover from shrapnel wounds that left him bodily a skinny caricature of his former self.

These, you see, are my wars and my compatriots' wars (and many of AM's readers' wars). But they are not America's wars. Listening to NPR this morning on my day off, reading through the newspapers, looking at the most emailed and read articles in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and LA Times, I feel increasingly that service in Afghanistan and Iraq is little regarded and little understood.

What is it that defines these wars for the American people?

Once, service was seen as gallant and bravery lauded. Even in Vietnam, that most hated of wars, 242 were awarded the Medal of Honor. Today's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in fewer of the nation's highest award for valor in seven years (4 awards) then did a single month in Haiti in 1915 (6 awards including the famous Smedley Butler). And while only 18% of Medals of Honor have been awarded posthumously, none have been awarded to a living US warrior in any theater of the "Global War on Terror." So bravery does not define the war for most Americans--we, the Armed Forces, have taken that one out of the equation.

In the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, national mobilization resulted in a nation at war in which war was defined by family in harm's way and a nation committed to victory. In response to 9/11, America was asked to pay less in taxes and continue to go to the movies and spend as much as possible in order to keep the economy going. The cost of the war was literally passed on to our children and their children so that we could continue life uninterrupted.

War for most Americans, although not for Iraqis and Afghans, remains a spectator sport to which they can feel little emotional attachment. Fewer than one half of one percent of Americans have seen service in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even if we include the broadest reckoning of their friends and loved ones in the equation, 95% or more of all Americans remain profoundly untouched by these wars--even as their long-term security and way of life remains intimately tied to the outcomes.

For most Americans I am growing increasingly to believe, service is defined through the prism of recent reports on PTSD and the failures to provide adequate health care to our wounded warriors at Walter Reed and elsewhere. In a society that has not served, veterans have become a class of victims--a yellow ribbon magnet on your car reminds of the perils of service just as a pink ribbon reminds of the peril of breast cancer and a red ribbon of AIDS.

Of course, service is a choice, not a disease, a choice increasingly required of a citizenry separated by a wall of indifference from the real threat posed by the international takfiri movement.

This Memorial Day, in addition to remembering fallen comrades, I'll hope for a time when the nation again believes its security worth fighting for, its wars worth winning, and its warriors brave.