Amazing Photo: Hurricane does not deter guards at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

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348. I commend your efforts to educate kids about war.

Yet, it is hard for me to tell whether you are passing a value judgment on draft dodging or not. If a cause is injust, why not honor those who stood against it?

Look, I get that there is the point of view that one should honor courage in combat regardless of the morality of the cause that was being fought for. I could almost accept such a point of view if it was universally and consistently applied.

And yet, people in this thread frequently have singled out the second World War as the prominent example of why they "honor the fallen". This seems strange in that context, since it to some degree suggests that they are in fact taking the morality of the cause into account.

If it only were about "courage in combat" we should honor all sides of all wars equally. OR we are in fact making a value judgment, which would force us to conclude that the record of the US, in particular in times later than the second World War, is far less than clean. (There also seem to be some that think the morality of one cause "rubs off" on other causes.)

My opinions on the subject are probably colored by my particular perspective: I have two nationalities and (at least) four different ethnic heritages. I have several relatives who fought on various sides of various wars, some of them opposing each other. If it came down to it, and people were at each other's throats, I almost would have no other choice than make a value judgment. I'd have to pick a side, and I'd have to make my pick based on my perceived morality of each particular cause. Or perhaps I would simply decide it is all shit and stay out of it entirely. There would inevitably be some who would consider me a traitor, a coward or whatever. And if it came to that, I'd probably likewise be condemning those who chose differently. At any rate I don't have the luxury of saying "oh well because I was born in this or that place, I sticked with my side" and expect people to honor that.

I spent a large part of my life in Germany, and from that experience I can tell you one thing: The stain of a huge injustice that people actually took up arms for, by their own choice or not, never ever ever goes away. A ceremony singling out the German military for honoring would, even today, always be tainted by the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the SS, because it would always be hurtful to those who were the victims of German aggression.

Likewise the Iraq war and also the Vietnam war, will always be a stain on the US military (as much as the second World War is a spot of pride to some), and a ceremony honoring the fallen of the United States will always be hurtful to the people in Iraq and Vietnam who are still suffering from the consequences of the wars. To them, the fact that individual soldiers didn't make the choices, or in fact committed individual acts of courage and heroism, is simply of no consequence.

I think if the teacher you spoke of truly "got it", then Vietnam would not have been spelled by not 58.000 pins but several million.