Memorial Day, 2009

Fallujah

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate... we can not consecrate... we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract...

— Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address

Every day should be Memorial Day; every day we should remember the costs of our unique freedoms and the men and women who paid that costs in full measure. And yet it is so easy to set aside the images from foreign lands, the news reports, the knowledge that the ultimate price is being paid on a daily basis.

And so we have a day to remind us all of that part of America, our soldiers, who are indeed the best, most honorable part of us all.

My thoughts today are with my many friends in harms way, in Afghanistan, outside of Baghdad, in other unnamed places, and my deepest hopes and prayers that they all return to us safely.

I honor the memory of those who fought and those who fell, and of those who never quite found their way home from foreign battlefields. I honor the memory of my father and his service, my high school friends who found their destinies in the steamy jungles of Southeast Asia.

Above all, we must never forget the fragility of our freedoms and the price others pay for us to keep it. On the day we forget that price, we are all lost.

Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground

Mother Earth will swallow you

Lay your body down

— CSN&Y

Find the Cost of Freedom