A shame we couldn't trade Dick Cheney for Jon Rumble

"I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."
-- DICK CHENEY, 2004

You may have heard the old expression that war is all about old men sending young men off to die. Well, today is the day we honor those who fought and died in defense of our country.

We even honor those who only thought they were dying for their country. It certainly wasn't their fault that they trusted the dishonest men who lied us into war. Nor was it their fault that they expected people in high positions to be honorable.

Yet thousands of Americans died in Iraq because of the mendacity of men like Dick Cheney. A former colleague of mine, Conor Friedersdorf, now writes for The Atlantic, and three years ago he did a brilliant piece called "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney."

This may not be the most appropriate piece for Memorial Day, but nobody had to lie us into World War II, and I never heard anyone tell me his dad or grandfather was in the trenches in Italy or storming the beaches of Pacific islands and asking why they were doing it.

Jon Rumble

My friend Jon Rumble died at Quang Nam in December 1968, and many years later I spoke with a friend of his who served with him in Vietnam. Don Dark is gone now as well, but this was part of his memory of their service.

"By the time we met, we both had the same view of the war. We knew that all the lives lost were in vain and that, given the politics of the time, we were not there to win the war."

As a nation, we had other priorities.

But Jon Rumble and 58,000 others like him were just as dead, and the lives they would have lived and the children they would have had were every bit as nonexistent.

Jon was a wonderful guy, someone who really enjoyed his life. He played one of the two leads in our senior class play in the spring of 1967, and one of our classmates described him as a "master of the universe" that spring.

Were 58,000 young Americans worth throwing away in a war we were never going to win?

Hardly.

Next time send Cheney.

Send Don Rumsfeld. Send G.W. Bush, whose Alabama National Guard service was a classic example of how rich kids risk nothing anymore. Hey, at least Georgia never invaded Alabama on his watch.

I weep for the lives lost of all the young men who believed they were defending America, who truly believed that the blood of patriots must be shed in defense of our country. They believed that Bush and Cheney wouldn't lie to them, but let's be fair. We are coming up on 13 years of war in Afghanistan, and the fact that a liberal president is responsible for five and a half years of that makes me sick to my stomach.

We could fight in Afghanistan for 100 years, and six months after we left it would be as if we were never there.

I'll try to end this post on an upbeat note with a beautiful video that captures the spirit of Memorial Day, but I do want to say one more thing.

America would have been far better off if Cheney had died in Vietnam and Jon Rumble were still alive today.