You understand, of course, what a stunning concession that latter point is. With a shelf life of, what, 24 hours?

He'll have changed his mind by the time my coffee is perked tomorrow.

We're still roughly 2,000 below the death toll three years ago this Saturday at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, though not only do I not expect that fact to make it into the media this week, I doubt we'll see anything more than a few wide angle shots of the burning towers on the news (Fox excluded) over the next seven days.

It's not always tragic for the soldiers, but it's often tragic for their families.

I'd be willing to go fight China if they invaded Taiwan, but my family wouldn't necessarily agree that it was worth risking my life over.

Also, given that, in your view, WWII was not a necessary war for Americans to fight, and that most of the soldiers were drafted, wouldn't that make all 300,000 or so American military deaths tragedies ?
Not to mention the 700,000 or so German civilians killed by British and American bombing, that would largely have been avoided if the US hadn't joined WWII.

The tragic deaths of WWII are those that were not incurred in getting rid of the Communists.

OJ,

So we should have been on the same side as Hitler?

and Stalin Or fought both. Picking between them was a waste..

We were not physically capable of fighting both and the Japanese Empire at the same time. Hitler was worse and, unlike the Soviets, didn't have vast amounts of popular support in the West.

In the elections after 1945, the Communists got about 35% of the vote in France and over 40% in Italy and Belgium. In the first West German election after WWII, the Socialists, who were neutral and pacifist, would have won had the Christian Democrats not stolen the election from them. While there was no shortage of pro-fascists in the West prior to WWII, their numbers pale in comparison.

One other detail. The Nazis declared war on us. We didn't declare war on them.

They were fighting each other--we should have just kept selling them guns.

After Germanyfell we had the Soviets laid out for the taking. Japan didn't matter--they were done.

Roosevelt declared war on them first. Congress followed Hitler.

The US did not have a weapon which could even slow down a T-34 tank. Even in the Korean War, it took over a year to develop a decent bazooka. There were large populations of pro-Communist workers and activists in the newly liberated West. The Russians would have kicked our butt out of the continent. We wouldn't have had a single supply line. After Churchill lost in 1945, we didn't even have a safe homebase in Britain.

As a factual matter, we declared war on Japan. Germany then declared war on us. Then, we followed suit. Look it up.

Nuke Moscow instead of Hiroshima and the war's won.

Bart:

Don't bother.

You have as much chance of convincing oj that soccer is a great sport.

The US didn't have a plane that could fly that far and return safely, certainly over enemy territory loaded with anti-aircraft guns. It is 1500 miles from Berlin to Moscow. And even if you did 'nuke Moscow' the Russians would run the government from Omsk, another 1500 miles further east, as they were set to do once Moscow fell to the Nazis.

In 1945, all the professionals thought that engaging Russia in a land war in Europe was N-U-T-S.

Bart:

The military never thinks it can beat anyone. Folks who didn't want to fight the Nazis said we couldn't beat them. The USSR only beat Hitler because of our help. Stalin had to terrorize the population into fighting even though Hitler wanted to kill them all. We'd have come as liberators--they'd have fought even more reluctantly. There would have been no one to run things from Omsk.

Even after the war LeMay flew fake nuclear bombing runs over Moscow just to show them he could do it with impunity. He should have been allowed to run a real one.

You realize, of course, that this blows Kerry's "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" line clean out of the water (as I said in another set of comments). Why does he keep feeding the GOP their lines? Is he secretly in their pay or something?

Tragedy is used by politicians and the media nowadays as a morally neutral way to either avoid the attrubution of evil to the actions of killers, as with calling the school massacre in Russia a "tragedy", or to avoid the attribution of heroism and courage to those who sacrifice their lives to defend us and others. That is how John Kerry is using the term here.

Michael, the media focuses a lot on the reaction of parents to the deaths of servicemen, especially when the parents didn't want their children to fight. But these men and women made the conscious decision to fight for their nation, and they should be accorded the honor for their sacrifice, instead of being treated as passive children who were ripped from their mother's arms and sent to their doom. It is ironic that we try to infantilize the very people who by their sense of duty and sacrifice prove themselves to be the most mature members of our society.

Robert:

But the families were, in many cases, passively ripped from their loved ones by the loved ones themselves.

Honor the soldiers who chose to go, but why pretend that a wife, husband, or child would rather have a medal or ribbon, rather than the person ?
A soldier's child makes no decisions about who should fight, or when.
Thus, for them, tragedy.

Further, in many cases the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, etc., are NOT the "most mature members of our society", and that's why they go, because they're immature.
Good luck raising an army of thirty and fortysomethings without a draft. They know better.

Michael:

I'd rather James Madison were still here. His death is not therefore a tragedy.

"It is ironic that we try to infantilize the very people who by their sense of duty and sacrifice prove themselves to be the most mature members of our society."

Exactly.

oj:

But we have no expectation of James Madison being alive, whether you will it or no.

If you were to fire up your Timelord 3000 and bring him forward to 2004, whereupon he ran in front of a bus, it would be a tragedy.

Even if Madison joined the military and was killed in combat, it would still be tragic from our perspective, even though he accepted the goal and risks.

Michael:

So all the deaths of the Revolution were tragic?

Michael,
I'm curious why you view the decision to go into the military as a sign of immaturity. If you are referring to the idea that young men see the military as a place to learn responsibility and develop discipline and that they are thus "immature", I would argue that it is the realization at that early age that they will need those qualities in their adult life as a sign that they are more mature, for their age, than those young men who do not.

It isn't that the young people who decline to serve are necessarily already in possession of those qualities. The majority of 18 year olds are lacking them, just for the fact that they have been coddled in school for their entire life up to then. Nowadays, most young people who do not take on adult responsibilities such as military service or marriage and parenthood at an early age can live in a state of prolonged adolescence well into their 30s.

oj:

Not all deaths are tragedies. In some cases, the person dying and all who care for her accept the necessity of her being at risk.

However, unless the person dying accepts the risks, and has noone else who cares for her wellbeing, it's going to be a tragedy for someone.

Perhaps we hold different views about the meaning of "tragedy".

Robert Duquette:

The decision to join the military isn't necessarily a sign of immaturity, but it often is.
Warfare is a young man's game. Adults might see the need for personal combat, and of course, some folks just need killin', but to go voluntarily into combat takes a special sort of mentality, or an oblivion to the realities of warfare. The latter is what most young folks have, which is immature.
It may be mature to seek training, or to acquire benefits such as college tuition payments, but joining the military for those reasons ignores the fundamental purpose of those organizations, and such behavior is, in and of itself, immature.

Again, many mature people join the military, or go to war, for mature reasons, but being in the military, or going to war, is not proof of maturity.