Olberman, MacLeish and Cadets...

There are times when a confluence of ideas comes at me from different sources and I can't stop thinking about an idea...today is one of those days. I read a quote, I watched a youTube clip, and I stumbled onto a website. These three things have been turning in my head for a full 24 hours now and I am still as confused and torn as I was to begin with...in fact, possibly more so.

The night we got back, the Dean showed a video of a graduate from USMA who married, had a son, went to Iraq and was seriously wounded. He lost his eyesight and has severe trauma to his head and, from what it seems in the video, must wear a helmet at all times now. He is hoping to stay in the Army and has been asked to come teach at West Point. He also read us the letter of another graduate, a brother of a friend, who has received three purple hearts since graduation only a few years ago, and who still wants to stay and command in Iraq.

He told us that that was the cloth we were cut from. Men and women like them...but I can't help but wonder if I am. I am sure, when the time comes, I will do what I must--I don't doubt that. What I wonder is if I will have the same conviction, the same steadfast loyalty they do.

Keith Olberman gave another long diatribe against Bush which I watched on YouTube. There were some high (and low) points, as always. One thing he said that struck me was this:

[The war] has succeeded, Mr. Bush, in enabling you to deaden the collective mind of this country to the pointlessness of endless war, against the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It has gotten many of us used to the idea — the virtual “white noise” — of conflict far away, of the deaths of young Americans, of vague “sacrifice” for some fluid cause, too complicated to be interpreted except in terms of the very important-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase “the war on terror.”

And now I wonder...are we deadened to war now? Has the war this is killing countless Iraqis and Americans become "white noise"?

I wonder because I stumbled upon this website last night. It is run by an association of Graduates (not the Association of Graduates, lest there be any confusion), and has news clippings, eulogies and photos of deceased graduates. Eight from the class of 2004 alone. I went back and read all the bios and many of the eulogies through the graduating class of 1997, my ten year predecessors. I have visited the grave of one of them, where two of his classmates (now married), shared stories with us about his life. They introduced him to a group of us, "We are here to introduce you to our friend, Eric."

I do not intend to makes their deaths political, that is far from my intent. My intent in sharing this site is simply to show my confusion at this point. What I'm confused about, I'm not entirely sure.

The third idea...MacLeish's poem, which I had read before in Seattle, and which I found again, I will post in full.

The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses.
(Who has not heard them?)....

They say,
We were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say,
We have done what we could
But until it is finished it is not done.

They say,
We have given our lives
But until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say,
Our deaths are not ours,
They are yours,
They will mean what you make them.

They say, Whether our lives, and our deaths were for peace and a new hope Or for nothing
We cannot say.
It is you who must say this.

They say, We leave you our deaths,
Give them their meaning.

Only the last two stanzas were printed in the monument in Seattle. The poem has a much different meaning when read in full. Again...I don't know what to think, or how this all ends...but, it was on my mind, so...I post it.