Ken Halterman (Readers' Forum, Sept. 5) writes that he mourns the loss of heroes Cory Jenkins, Kurt Curtiss and his friend Mike Hughes. All died fighting for our country. Then, he goes further, saying they died for "nothing except pride and bravery."
The writer doesn't understand that freedom ... is never free. He doesn't understand that his freedom to read and write to this paper has been purchased for him by the blood of countless, nameless heroes.
I'm grateful that I do understand and appreciate the price others have paid for me. My son, Zachary Lee Padron, is serving right now in Afghanistan. Every minute of the day, his mother and I worry about him. We pray and trust he will come home safe. But if Zachary dies fighting for America, like so many before him, he will have laid down his life for all of us. There is no greater good.
Lee Padron
Draper
I can in fact understand the fear of knowing a loved one is in harm's way. Certainly, we want to believe that if our loved one dies in military service that their death had meaning, that their dying was truly in service of a greater good. We want to believe that if someone we know and love is in the military and they die in combat that their death makes us safer and freer.
But is the war in Afghanistan really in defense of our freedom? Is it truly a war that will improve our freedom? Is the war in Afghanistan even a war in defense of the United States?
From where I sit, it seems that the war in Afghanistan has failed in every one of its operational objectives. Al Qaeda has not been stopped. The people of Afghanistan continue to live amidst nearly constant violence. The nation is is still a chaotic patchwork of warlords and druglords and poverty and despair. I know it's not pleasant to admit but at some level, I'm not sure our presence in Afghanistan is doing anything beneficial for our nation. Did Afghanistan ever even pose a threat to us?
It seems to me that the greatest failure of American foreign policy in recent years has been our ongoing inability to discern the real threats to the US and decide on appropriate action. It seems we have been trapped in the illusion of our own military might and we have come to believe a set of lies about our military's greatness. We seem to have indulged in a mythology in which our ability to shape the world to our will is boundless and that we can do so anywhere and anytime we like. We spend more than any other nation in the world on our military but we seem never to ask is this a wise use of our wealth? We have tried to maintain our empire of consumption - a neverending supply of material goods to fill a hole in souls they will never - and have built a worldwide empire which drains our resources - moral and material.
Andrew Bacevich calls it the crisis of profligacy - the great unfolding crisis in which we spend ever greater resources to secure ever fewer rewards in the name of our chase for ever more material abundance, at the cost of ever more wealth and time and lives. And at the cost - here at home - of our freedoms. At some point, the American empire cannot be sustained and we must choose - will we abandon empire in the name of democracy or will we pursue empire and sacrifice democracy.
When the US invaded Afghanistan, then forgot about it to invade Iraq, it signaled a dire turning point, an inflection point if you will, of a spiral turning unremittingly downward as we lost the ability to discern real from imagined threats. At the cost of lives and billions of dollars and moral authority, we have pursued two wars without victory and stand alone before the world, a screaming colossus incapable of self discipline.
It is my hope that not one more American will die in Afghanistan or Iraq, that we will have strength of national character to end those wars and find a new way. And it is my hope for Lee Padron that his son comes home safe and sound and lives a very long life. |
