Memorial Day

Ernest Hemingway on war and heroism:

I wouldn't mind being wounded again so much because I know just what it is like. And you can only suffer so much, you know, and it does give you an awfully satisfactory feeling to be wounded. It's getting beaten up in a good cause. There are no heroes in this war. We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen, but it shouldn't reflect any special credit on those that are chosen. They are just the lucky ones. I am very proud and happy that mine was chosen, but it shouldn't give me any extra credit. Think of all the thousands of other boys that offered. All the heroes are dead. And the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. When a mother brings a son into the world she must know that some day the son will die, and the mother of a man that has died for his country should be the proudest woman in the world, and the happiest. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

So thanks one and all for your service.

Andy and Ian Memorialize D-Day

Hearts and Minds: Who Could've Know Edition

I blame the great strategic thinkers who sent the two kids off to kill people for no especially good reason and the equally serious folks who have kept them there for this whole heartbreaking mess:

The Post, which reviewed the photographs, says one depicts Spec. Jeremy N. Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, smiling and crouching next to the corpse of Gul Mudin, who was killed Jan. 15, 2010. The other photograph shows Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes of Boise, Idaho next to Mudin's body. Morlock and Holmes have both been charged with murder in Mudin's case, and Morlock, who has pleaded guilty to a total of three charges of murder, is scheduled to be sentenced at a court-martial on Wednesday.

One of Morlock's attorneys said the photographs do not have a time or date stamp, and called the setting and identity of the corpse "mere speculation." But one of Holmes' attorneys confirmed the authenticity of the photo showing his client, while adding that Holmes had been ordered to be in the picture by his superiors.

A third photograph published by Der Spiegel today allegedly depicts two dead, handcuffed Afghan civilians.

In response to the release of the photographs, the U.S. Army issued a statement, calling the photographs "repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army."

"We apologize for the distress these photos cause," the Army statement said, according to the Post. "The actions portrayed in these photographs remain under investigation and are now the subject of ongoing U.S. court-martial proceedings, in which the accused are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

The UK paper The Guardian reports that military commanders in Afghanistan "are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered" by the release of the photographs. On Sunday night, The Guardian says, organizations employing foreign staff in Afghanistan, including the U.N., ordered their staff into "lockdown."

If war is, in fact hell, those who lead us into it must be devils, no?