Wasted

When a democrat says troops lives are wasted, they are criticized for undermining the troops, hating america, smoking weed with osama, etc. When a republican says it, the response is "he didn't really mean it," or "we know no one supports the troops more than John McCain"; that's why he supports surging more of them to Iraq to get wasted.

What I don't get is why people feel that for someone to die in a war has to have meaning. No one tries to put meaning into the facts surrounding the death of someone who dies in a car crash, or of cancer, or even who dies in their sleep of old age. We can all speculate about why this is so. I think one aspect of it is that dying in a war is so stupid and avoidable, that survivors do not want to admit that their loved one may have died not just for no reason, but voluntarily for no reason.

Another aspect, of course, is recruiting new soldiers by pumping up a mystique of sacrifice. The whole football macho bullshit stuff about proving you are tough gets kids 90% of the way to signing up, and the idea that if they die it will be meaningful gets them the rest of the way. Well, it is bullshit. To paraphrase Heller, no one person dying is going to make any difference, and if everyone thought that way, you would be a fool to feel any different.

I know this is not comforting to those who have lost loved ones in war. My only suggestion to them is to find meaning in their loved ones lives, not in their deaths, just like those who lose loved ones to accidents, cancer, and so on.