While reading through some older news columns this morning I came across a letter to an editor that caused my hackles to rise. In this short but not-so-sweet rant the writer urged The Post to quit reporting when deceased soldiers are sent home. His opinion is it serves no purpose to do so and weakens a country’s resolve against the war on terror.
Excuse me?
Let me see if I’ve got this right. We should send our brave men and women into battle in order to keep our country safe and free of terrorists (hopefully) but when and if they die, serving their country, we’d all just be better off hushing up and ignoring their sacrifice? Gosh it’s hard to type while shaking my head and rolling my eyes all at the same time.
As I see it, we need to keep the human sacrifices due to war in our minds. Yes it’s deeply sad and yes it’s painful and fills us with regret that we still live in a world where war is even necessary but to ignore the price of war is to dishonor those who fight on our behalf.
Freedom never comes without a hefty cost; history teaches us this. Sure, we’d all like to be able to say “I’ll take one order of freedom, please.” And not peek at the price tag but it just doesn’t work like that. We need to honor our war dead and we need to remember that a country should never enter into war lightly because of the human cost.
Therefore, when one of our soldiers dies please don’t bury your head in the sand. It may be painful to think of what that person gave up for you but you must think about it. You must honor it and you must remember it. Lest We Forget.