by Morgan Johnson

Created on: June 25, 2008

To die in vain is to die for no good reason, to cast away your life on a pointless cause that has no bearing on your life and no value to your perception of the world.

The well-informed and well-intentioned soldier who goes voluntarily into the jaws of the beast cannot die in vain.

As metaphysical as this sounds, it can be shortened to simply this: it is the soldier who determines the meaning of his death. Therefore the answer to this question has to be "NO!"

The soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines fighting in Iraq have volunteered to serve in harm's way because they kept faith with their oath of enlistment or office. The stay there for a number of reasons:

- Some are fighting for the freedom of Iraqi peoples;
- Some are fighting for America's freedom from terrorism and fear;
- Some are fighting for glory,
- And others are simply fighting for the person next to them.

Whatever the reason they embrace, it is the one they have chosen to stake their life on. They have declared in their soul "This is worth everything to me, even unto the end of my days!"

For non participants to sit and say that "no, it isn't worth it," is to speak in ignorance.

Civilians who have never donned a uniform, never placed their lives on the line for a cause they believe in often sit wringing their hands over the politics of war. What they never know is that politics lose their meaning in war.

All my life I have seen men go off to war. Many say the Vietnam War was an exercise in futility. Many loud voices mourn the 58,000 names on the Black Wall and wonder "What were WE doing there?"

That's a question that I never hear from my father or any of the thousands of Vietnam vets I grew up with, served with and ultimately buried in federal cemeteries. THEY who went knew their reasons.

That is the great mystery and the open truth of this question. A soldier who is sent to die in ignorance by an uncaring population or leader has died in vain. It has happened before.

Eastern nations from Turkey to China have amassed great conscript armies for millennia. These conscripts have been marched to their deaths in their tens of thousands for nothing more than the glory of a distant despot.

But a volunteer in a free society has his own motive. America's warriors serving in Iraq have given a value to things of our nation. They think American ideals are worth dying for and we who stand and watch are simply not qualified to minimize their sacrifice.

All we should do, all we can do is honor them and remember them.

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