Originally published on the CGS blog on May 28, 2007.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. He’s a West Point graduate, a Vietnam War veteran, and the author of the highly-regarded book, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. (Watch a related Cato Institute-sponsored book discussion or read Chris Preble’s book review.) And until May 13, 2007, he was the proud father of a soldier fighting in a war that he himself publicly opposes. Unfortunately since his 27-year-old son and namesake, 1st Lt. Andrew Bacevich Jr., was killed in a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province, he is also now the member of a less-and-less exclusive group of individuals — grieving American and Iraqi mothers, fathers and siblings who have lost loved ones in the Iraq War.
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Bacevich tells the harrowing story of what it means to be a grieving father, a good citizen, and a brave soldier in these difficult days. Bacevich states:
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
I, myself, refuse to accept Bacevich’s mea culpa for a war he didn’t seek, support, or accept. The failure rests squarely on the shoulders of our elected officials, on both sides of the all-too-political aisle, who refuse to heed the will of the American people and continue to support a failed foreign policy and disastrous war.
Would there be any better way to honor the sacrifice of 1st Lt. Bacevich and America’s fallen heroes on this Memorial Day than to end a poorly conceived, disastrously prosecuted war that keeps adding to the ranks of the fallen? Alas, it appears our elected officials are all too willing to let good citizens and proud parents like Andrew Bacevich pay the high price of political cowardice.
