Dulce Et Decorum Est

[rug]

By ROGER COHEN
Published: August 23, 2012

NEW YORK — As I gazed at the faces of the more than 2,000 American service members killed since the war in Afghanistan began almost 11 years ago, I found myself thinking of lines of Kipling:

If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

The untruths have been almost too numerous to chronicle, beginning with the great untruth that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that justified the war in Iraq (where more than 4,480 U.S. service members died); and sliding into the smaller, no less lethal untruths about how Pakistan was an ally in the Afghan struggle, and global terrorism beatable on the battle field, and nation-building feasible in Afghanistan, and sacrifice in the cause reasonable when half of the United States was off at the mall shopping, and victory always — always — within reach.

Afghanistan is a country where President Obama appointed an able envoy, the late Richard Holbrooke, only to emasculate him; where the president, Hamid Karzai, has long manipulated Western succor to his private ends; and where the greatest emergent threat comes from Afghans in the uniforms of the security forces America and its allies are training to take over from them in 2014. The country is a bottomless pit of hypocrisies.

As James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren wrote in a devastating New York Times article, “In just the past two weeks, at least 9 Americans have been killed in such insider attacks. For the year to date, at least 40 NATO service members, most of them American, have been killed by either active members of the Afghan forces or attackers dressed in their uniforms — already outstripping the toll from all last year. ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/opinion/dulce-et-decorum-est.html

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Afghanistan: Where armies go to die. Where ours is dying...

Dulce et Decorum Est
Pro Patria Mori...

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[intaglio]

3. The complete Wilfred Owen poem

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[rug]

4. Killed one week before the Armistice.

Thanks for posting the whole poem.

[intaglio]

5. NP, There's also the sadness and terrible regret in the Kipling poem

He had lost his son, after encouraging and enabling the boy to go and fight. I have heard, though I cannot vouch for this, that he used his establishment contacts to get the boy into the army despite his son having very poor eyesight.