THE POINT OF D-DAY WASN'T TO LEAVE OUR DEAD ON THE BEACHES EITHER:

President Bush's Loss of Faith (NY Times, 8/24/05)

It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

"We owe them something," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that "makes no sense." No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice.

It may be understandable that a grieving mother is that self-absorbed, but what are the Timesmen talking about? The task in question wasn't the sacrifice, but the constitutional republic run by Shi'ites and Kurds instead of the Ba'athists that the Iraqi people are putting the finishing touches on even as the President speaks. That was certainly worth the lives of a few Americans and to not help the Iraqis complete the task would dishonor those dead.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2005 6:42 AM