Memorial Day originated as a day to honor and mourn the Civil War dead. And commentators regularly upbraid us for reducing it to unofficial start of summer tourist season. Whatever the sentiments that anyone has held regarding this day, Americans in 2025 might take the occasion to consider a newer view of war, war deaths, and patriotism.
Traditional reflections on the war dead have focused on their commitment to defend America, and on love of country. Most of the dead responded to aggression abroad, against regimes that posed a real potential threat to our ways of life. In living memory, though, some of America’s wars have aroused controversy, for various reasons. There has been bitterness among some, in angry convictions that the dead “died for nothing,” or, worse, in a wrong war.
As the world has grown more complex, particularly after World War II, Americans have more frequently been called to fight in complicated situations, not directly in crusades against totalitarian aggressors. Some of our wars have happened for reasons that no one can quite pin down. Deaths might have resulted from a well meant but misconceived policy, out of sheer miscalculation, perhaps out of negligent or hubristic analysis, or even by a badly motivated initiative in mistaken policy processes.
It has been said that war represents a failure, at some point, of a nation’s foreign policy. Given America’s core national purpose, of nurturing and protecting freedoms, our forces serve generically to deter war. Given our still-daunting military capabilities, if we need to fight a war it tends to mean we failed, at the least, to deter some belligerent. Even going into Iraq in 2003, we did not initiate warfare but escalated a long-standing armed stand-off – and the perceived need to do so arose because Saddam Hussein had not been eliminated or deterred beforehand. If any of our losses were unnecessary, it was due to our errors.
If someone joins the armed services, they expose themselves to mortal danger that may well arise for no good reason. When they join, they offer their lives in insurance against mistakes.
In a society as complex and diverse as America in 2025, causes and motives behind foreign policy are hard to isolate. But whoever commits errors or sins that led to war and its deaths, the nation remains the agent, “all of us.” We elect the leaders; even if I opposed a particular leader, the opponents on offer did not convince enough voters, while if I supported the leadership, our society did not produce influences and underlings to advise a better course. It is often a tenuous connection from any given American to the decisions and failings that lead to war, but it is real. What do we want, where does it come from, who doesn’t want us to have it, do we need to overcome them or do without, do we have other ways to get it, … policy makers are shaped by the answers we paint. Some of the answers are fully legitimate, some represent self-indulgence, none can ever be given in full certainty of any kind. It is up to us to give the best answer I can, not just by declaiming my righteousness, but also trying to find “my” best answer that also appeals to my fellow Americans.
Whatever the exact root of the conflict in which they were killed, whatever the correctness or errors in judging the need for combat, whoever I am, the dead died for us. They answered as ordered, to people we elected, by votes that showed what I want, or did not induce others to want. In a nation defined by a common conviction in everyone’s personal rights, each of them died for me, and the failings that led to each death are mine. We should mourn each, with the bereaved, here and long gone. I must honor their sacrifices.
Common Conviction 