I'm channel-hopping and I just heard Chris Matthews say something that sounds so right to me that I had to pause the TiVo and transcribe it. He was rambling a bit but I like what I think he meant…
I thought John McCain made a terrible point tonight. He said if someone dies in battle, someone serving their country because they were ordered to do something in battle, because they were out on a mission…you don't pick your missions. You don't pick your wars. When someone dies for their country, they have done that. It's over. They have served their country. They are patriotic. They deserve forever to be remembered and honored. It's not a question of what happens later in that war, or whether that battle was a good one or not, or whether you should continue to fight. By the definition John McCain gave us tonight — and it was a heinous definition — we must continue every war we ever start. Every time we suffer a casualty, we must fight that war indefinitely to achieve the initial objectives set by generals who may well be wrong.
I think that's a very hard argument to make morally 'cause it suggests that war must never end. It suggests that every war that's begun must continue indefinitely until it achieves the political or the military objectives set in the initial context. Contexts change and sometimes wars have to end. The Korean War ended. It was not dishonorable for General Eisenhower to come to Korea and end the war in 1953 that had begun in 1950, ending a war without final victory. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing dishonorable about it. You don't have to complete the mission. You simply have to serve your country honorably when called to do so. So I think John McCain is wrong, demonstrably wrong. I wish sometimes someone would call him on that. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not tonight.
If the case for staying in Iraq is that we have to justify the past deaths…well, that's ridiculous. I started out as a supporter of the Vietnam War and protested the protesters for a long time before finally joining them. Nothing sent me over towards their side of the street like hearing someone say we had to stay there because if we left, the ones who'd died would have died for nothing. It's an argument, of course, for sticking with any war, regardless of its wisdom, doing the human equivalent of throwing good money after bad. There's got to be a better reason than that.