Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to It's entirely up to me

Sure, they should have that right

The question is, do they want to make the implied statement that American dead are too good to leave in non-American graves?

Does the purpose of the war in which those soldiers died mean nothing in the heat of today's political quarrels? For that war is the one to which their graves give memory.

Are we more concerned about making sure that no Americans should have to travel to, and spend money in, a country currently out of favor in order to honor the dead? Do we not, by this attitude, convert what is now a shrine into an instrument of revenge through tourism?

Is not anywhere American soldiers are buried, having fought to support this country's ideals (or at least its rule of law), "American soil", no matter where the international boundaries are?

If you want to restrict your buying habits, no one is going to stop you. That has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of American dead buried near where they fell.

If the families of war dead want to have their remains moved, that's their choice. (My grandparents chose to have my uncle brought home rather than be buried in France, though their motives were those of parents mourning their firstborn, not those of grandchildren with a political ax to grind.) If they do so choose, when the world looks around and asks itself what America had ever done for it, there will be one less silent witness in its back yard to testify as to the answer.

Regards--
Mary Anne

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (23 posts)