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During one of Sen. John McCain's campaign appearances on TV, he promised a lady that as president, he would see that her son had not died in vain in Iraq. He promised he would win the war and then that would not be the case.
I wonder: did he mean to say that since we didn't win in Vietnam, our soldiers who died there, died in vain? Or in Korea, did our soldiers die in vain there also? How about a war we did win? World War II; I returned from that war convinced (like we all were) that we had fought a war that would end all wars. We not only won the war, we won peace for the world! How naive we were.
I hadn't been home long and was still getting used to wearing civvies instead of my Navy bell-bottoms when suddenly the peace we thought we had won was shattered by a new war in Korea.
Even with the help of those two fearsome A-bombs we dropped while defending against the Japanese, that war did not scare anyone out of going to war like we thought it would. McCain should never have let the lady who posed him the question go on fearing her son had died in vain. He should have simply told her, "No soldier who loses his life defending his country ever dies in vain."
The senator dreams of the day he can bask in the glory of a war he won. But there is only tragedy, destruction, death and unhappiness in wars. There is no glory in war and we should stop trying to make it so with our petty arguments and disagreements over who is patriotic and who is not. We have a history of one war after another. Why can't we settle our differences without resorting to war?
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Warren R. Crackel
Willmar
