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Honor the Fallen: Let the Living Finish the Job
Over at National Review Online, Joe Skelly, a college history professor and Army reservist who has served in Iraq, has penned a moving tribute to those who have paid the ultimate price to defend our democracy. 
He writes that from the beginning of recorded time, we have mourned those who have fallen in battle. Today the headlines are filled with stories of families mourning the loss of their courageous loved ones who have fallen on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some Americans wonder why this must be so. This is a wholly natural response — to question the utility of conflict, to rage at the mercilessness of war. Still, within the depths of these tragedies perhaps we can discern some meaning in the deaths of our fellow Americans, and, as a people, take solace from how they lived their lives. They reflect the very best qualities of our free society. Liberators, not conquerors, they took an oath to defend not a tyrant, but our Constitution, and all of the natural rights it embodies. A strong bond links the fallen of today in an unbreakable chain: in death, as in life, they are the soldiers of a democratic nation.
The men and women who remain on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan carry on this tradition. They, too, have pledged to defend our democracy. Because they leave the civilian world to enter the warrior’s profession, they may seem, at first glance, to be separate from the larger community. But this is not so. They are not distinct, they do not form a separate caste, like the mercenary Hessians of the Revolutionary War or the Nazi SS of World War II. They are citizen soldiers, an integral part of our republic. As such, when they die in battle, we are all diminished; when they give up their lives, we all relinquish a part of our selves. Yet in death there is hope. We gain from their valor that which they intended: the preservation of our freedom and our way of life.”
Memorial Day is in one week. Let us reach out to the families of the heroic dead with our prayers and support. But let us honor the memory of their loved ones by supporting those who are still in the fight.
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