Casey Sheehan and George Bush

Casey Sheehan, former Eagle Scout and good Marine, is dead and that is a waste. His mother is mourning and being vilified for complaining about the cynical expenditure of his very being. He was raised with American values--loyalty to family and friends, patriotism, and standing for one's principles. And, because of his principles, he is dead.

Well, not entirely because of his principles. He was sacrificed by people who did not, judging by their actions, share his principles. His president obtained, through family and political connections, a place in the Texas Air National Guard and did not go into harm's way. Karl Rove did not go. Paul Wolfowitz did not go. Dick Cheney did not go. Donald Rumsfeld did not go. They are alive and sending other people's children into harm's way, but not their own. In fact, they and their friends are enjoying tax cuts and very nice capital gains, assuming they are invested in ExxonMobile and Halliburton.

Casey Sheehan will never tap his feet to rock and roll, vacation in Hawaii, walk through a graduation line, look into the face of a daughter, or walk into a voting booth. What a great loss for his family! We will never completely realize what we all have lost in the one thousand eight hundred and counting young lives we are spending in Iraq. Compared to what Casey Sheehan and each of those other one thousand eight hundred and counting Americans lost, our loss is nothing because each of them lost everything.

I am a fifty-eight year old white male who has lived almost forty years that Casey Sheehan will NEVER live, an old man who realizes and mourns the fact that Casey Sheehan has been robbed of his life for no good reason. His death was in vain, but it is important to note that it is a rationalization by the living to even make the "not in vain" claim. We need to set about the business of mourning for those who have lost every thing, and for those who have been maimed, and for the spiritual cost of the egotistical adventure that "shock and awe" has boiled down to. And, yes, by God, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition. We need to get the rest of our young people safely home as soon as possible and set about dealing with terrorism by aggressively minding our own business, aggressively finding sources of energy other than fossil fuels, and paying attention to growing democracy in this country.