In a campaign stop Sen Barack Obama made the following statement:
We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and has seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.
I wonder how the families of these fallen heroes feel about the Senator's comments? Somehow I do not think this is the type of statement that is going to sit well with the majority of voters, especially in the heartland. Michelle Malikin has a great post on this and here is a link to include video of the statement.
Just another uber-Leftist Presidential wannabe sporting an empty klown suit - oh, wait, who also happens to be an "articulate Black" - And "clean"!
How about experience? A positive track record of accomplishment (for Americans)? A rational political philosphy underlying his policies?
No go. He's being set up in order to be crushed by Billary. Just watch..
-JP
Posted by: Jefferson Paine on February 13, 2007 09:56 AMNo Soldier Dies In Vain
Feb 15, 2007 | Permalink
Senator Obama says he meant no offense by saying soldiers' lives “wasted.”
To say that war is wasteful is to state the obvious. The trillion or more dollars that will eventually be spent on the Iraq War is indeed being poured down a rat-hole. To say nothing of the good that money could have accomplished for education, health care, tax cuts, energy, or science, we could hardly have used it more foolishly. We have wasted, through ludicrous foreign policy, our international standing, our technology, and our resources.
But to say a life has been wasted is to say something else entirely. A "wasted" life implies one spent for nothing, as for example someone of great talent who wastes their life pursuing low and mean pleasures of the moment, spending their potential on things of no value. Truly, our celebrities’ lives are wasted. The lives of soldiers are never wasted.
The founders of our country had the foresight to place ultimate control of military might in the hands of a civilian government, that zealotry and dictatorship would be checked. The United States soldier does not swear an oath of allegiance to any one man, as German soldiers once swore to Hitler, but rather they swear to defend the Constitution. It is from this simple oath that the honor of the soldier, living or dead, rests securely. Whatever the motivations of those who sent him, the soldier offers his life in defense of the core values of his country.
The United States Military, from the Air Force to the Navy Seals, makes one unique demand of those who serve that is unequalled in any other profession: that they be willing to lay down their lives in service of their country. There are many professions in which service to community is paramount and danger plays a large role; police and fire fighters come to mind. But in each case, other than the military, the risk is always a calculated risk. That is, the individual has the luxury to assess the risk and to avoid it, as in a police officer awaiting backup before arresting a dangerous suspect. For soldiers, there is no calculating to be done; they are told to go into the line of fire and they go.
I have served as a fire fighter, risking myself to save others. But never did I feel that the flames had a special hatred for me; I never worried that a burning structure hid the fixed eye of a sniper; not one time did I fear that our truck would be blown to atoms by an IED buried under the street. The calculated risk of dangerous jobs, whether police officer, fire fighter, or underwater welder, cannot compare with a soldier’s risk, because it is not constant. Our soldiers in Iraq live with the fear of death 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for as many years as those in power care to tell them to stay there.
They can be held beyond their tour of duty and they can be recalled after discharge. They can be sent to die at any time, from the time they volunteer, for the rest of their lives. They are on call all day and night, every day and night, for pay that is less than minimum wage, knowing that if they are killed the survivor benefits are so poor that their families may live in poverty.
Whatever his motivations, whatever her intentions, the soldier makes a lopsided bargain with his country: For small pay and modest chances to improve his lot, he will face death that we may know our country is secure. As payback for this ultimate sacrifice we do not have much, but we must give all that we have: Respect for the soldier, honor for the dead, knowledge that they fell doing what they were supposed to do, following orders, ready and willing to die that others may live.
Senator Obama, your wish to chastise the president is well founded. George W. Bush is a dangerous fool, and all of us will pay the price for his follies for decades to come. But with every generation we learn anew what we have known since our founding: that to have the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the many, a few must be willing to give up those blessings. Those who die are to be remembered forever for having given us that precious gift, and no such gift is wasteful.
You recanted your statement immediately and you have been forgiven. But do not be swept away by your current fame and seeming invulnerability so much that you forget those whose lives were not spent in the libraries of Harvard but the deserts of Iraq; not the streets of Chicago but the streets of Baghdad; and who now reside not in the Senate but in the grave.
To all our fallen heroes, you are not forgotten, you are not gone from within us, your spirit moves us, your lives were indeed not wasted.