On Memorial Day, a grateful nation is meant to give thanks to all the servicemen and -women who have risked and lost their lives fighting on behalf of the United States. This last Monday in May will be no different.
We will and should say thank you a million times over to our veterans, as well as to those now serving overseas.
But in light of recent disasters like the one currently devolving in Iraq — a country that, all the experts agree, is teetering on the brink either of all-out anarchy or civil war — instead of just expressing the usual perfunctory gratitude, maybe we should also be saying we're sorry. It seems the least we can do. So here goes.
To all the servicemen and -women, alive, dead or injured in Iraq, we send out the following apology: We're sorry that you planned and executed your military strategy so remarkably well, only to find that the barnacles in Washington hadn't quite perfected their post-bellum game plan.
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We're sorry they made you exhibit A of their incompetence. You did your job. Those in Washington didn't. And you took the bullet for it.
In short, we're sorry, as our hokey president himself might have put it, that you rushed to Baghdad only to be left holding the bag.
We're sorry that our hardy-har commander in chief dropped like the dopiest of deus ex machinas onto the deck of an aircraft carrier and used you for the cheapest of all cheap photo ops. The sign over his head read "Mission Accomplished," but you knew better, didn't you? His mission was accomplished, sure. He'd had his slick victory and come out clean, even if you were left stuck in the mud — or is "quagmire" at long last le mot juste?
Yes, regrettably, as it turns out, your buddies had to die in combat not in order to make the situation better in Iraq but, it seems, to make it worse and, of course, to get the president reelected. We're really, really, really sorry about that.
But, then, I guess when it comes right down to it, sorry just doesn't cut it now, does it?
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