[Ed. note: Please welcome to the C&L team our old friend Ian Welsh, whose work from the Agonist and FDL many of you many know. Ian will be writing whatever he chooses, but that usually means economics and international politics.]

It's Memorial Day. I gather for many it's just another long weekend, but I know that for many it's what Remembrance Day is for Canadians like myself: a day to remember those who have died in war. I won't say "died to protect our freedom" or any such trite BS, because with few exceptions, most wars had nothing to do with protecting anyone's freedom, but they did die, nonetheless, for us.

Their blood is on our hands, sticky and wet, and it will never dry. Why?

Because we live in democracies. Because we elected the leaders who sent them to war. Whether you think those wars are justified, or not, at the end of the day, we bear the collective guilt of their deaths. They died due to the decisions we made, the society we live in.

Oh, we can say "I did everything I could to oppose the war", whether that's Iraq or Vietnam, or some other war. But even if that's true, well, you failed, didn't you? (Didn't I?) And so off went the young men and women, and they died, or they were maimed, or their brain case got knocked around and they came back shaking, and they wake up screaming at night, and they can't control their emotions and they'll never be the same again.

It's one of the ironies of democracy that we're all responsible, collectively, and yet each of us, individually, can say "but not me, I voted against him" or "I protested against that policy". And because it's true, each of us can feel, in the end, that the deaths and suffering caused by our society, whether in war, or through a horrific medical system, or through abuses in the penal system, aren't our fault.

But is it true? Or is it true instead, that we failed, that we support the system with both our consent and our tax dollars, and that we are therefor complicit in what it does?

I don't know. But I do know this, on this Memorial day, even if it's not a Canadian holiday, I'm thinking of those who died, both soldiers and civilian.

And at the very least, I know I failed.

(h/t Russ, S&R)

I love love love Google Earth. I can easily spend hours swooping all over the globe, looking at satellite pictures of the homes of friends and family, favorite vacation spots and dream destinations.

Sean, part of the content design team for Google Earth, has put together a special application for the program that is perfect for this Memorial Day: Map the Fallen.

This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died. [..]
For this project I collected information from a number of sources, including the Department of Defense's Statistical Information Analysis Division, icasualties.org, MilitaryTimes.com's Honor the Fallen, Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen, the Iraq and Afghanistan Pages, and Legacy.com. I used the Google Maps and GeoNames.org geocoding services to get coordinates for each person's home of record and approximate place of death. The map includes data through March 2009. I'd like to point out the incredible time commitment the above organizations invest in maintaining this information; as I've learned, it is not an easy task. All of the data I have assembled and generated for this project will be made freely available for download in the near future.

During this project, I have sought the advice and perspectives of several groups directly tied to these losses, including Gold Star families, veterans' groups, active-duty servicemen and women, and leadership in the United States Army. I've done my best to incorporate their feedback and suggestions in creating something that pays tribute to the memory and service of these fallen heroes. Out of respect for the families of those people on this map who have taken their own lives, I have chosen to describe these deaths as coming from "non-combat" related causes. This is a broad category used by the Department of Defense to define other causes of death resulting from accidents or illness.

I recognize that this map is just a slice of the story in these conflicts. The Iraqi and Afghani people have incurred substantial civilian losses through these wars; there are also U.S. and Coalition civilians, contractors, and reporters who have died as well. For this project, I've chosen to focus on the U.S. and Coalition military casualties, but I recognize that the losses extend beyond what is mapped in this project.

Each figure on the map denotes a servicemember lost during the last six years. Tied to their hometown, each figure pops up a screen that gives information about that fallen troop. In addition, families can add photos, audio and a guestbook for others to give their remembrance and honor their service.

Please, take some time to look through Map the Fallen and honor the sad sacrifice these men and women have made.

Julia Mathes, the widow of Army Specialist Marcus Mathes, drapes herself over his casket at Zephyrhills Municipal Airport. His body was flown in for his funeral and burial. (Photo - Christine Delessio)

This is something I wrote for Memorial Day 2005 and I run it every year:

Soldiers are not chunks of identical clay; each of them has a story, their own reasons for being caught in a war.

Brave? Maybe - sometimes, under some conditions. Scared, mostly. The younger they are, the more likely their presence had to do with restlessness, cockiness. The need to be part of a winning team, the desire to even a score. Kick ass, take names. Kill them all, let God sort them out.

The older they are, the more realistic they are. This was a steady paycheck, or a way to supplement the one they already had. When they join, it's with their eyes on the future benefit. When they're in the middle of a war, they think only of surviving the next five minutes. Please, God, please. Let me see my family again.

And when they die in the war, each death leaves a hole in the world. It's important to remember that, to not see them as a monolithic casualty list or as an acceptable loss.

No loss is acceptable. Ask the parents, the spouses, the children. They try. They tell themselves stories of nobility, sacrifice, a greater cause. They cover it up with the ritual rhetoric. But deep down, they must wonder.

Here is how to count the cost: In high school graduation pictures that will never be replaced with wedding pictures. In wedding rings that will never be worn smooth by years. By the daughters who will walk down the aisle with an uncle or brother instead of Dad. By the sons who will find themselves angry and lost, not understanding why. The children who will hear about their mother's eyes, their father's chin but won't ever see themselves reflected in that face.

By the parents who now understand the quiet obscenity of outliving their own children.

Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them.

They mattered.

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Less than a month before Korea, years before Vietnam and decades before Iraq, Memorial Day was about remembering those who served and died during the Wars previous, back to the Civil War. The Second World War had only ended less than five years before, the task of rebuilding was still going on. The upheavals and changes were new with words like "Right Of Self-Determination" and "Cold War" recent additions to the lexicon.

Everything was in a state of change, nobody really knew where any of it was headed. The only thing certain were fields of white crosses, evidence that sacrifice was the constant - no matter how much things changed, or how much they remained the same.

Outta the Cornfield:  Last year's Memorial Day post will be next year's as well

The Seminal: War and the reasons

Leftist Grandpa: The 'Terror Plot' that wasn't

AverageBro: Well, at least you've got Lebron...

The Existentialist Cowboy: When you die in America, it will be because you are NOT RICH

Words of Power: Of Yeats, Genocide, and the Blogosphere - Looming deadlines that frame our future and determine our legacy

But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

In its own way, this is a perfect song for Memorial Day. Bob Dylan's "It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is a seminal anti-war song of the 60s, having spawned so many famous quotes, people have probably forgotten the origin: quotes like "He who is not busy being born is busy dying" and "Money doesn't talk, it swears."

The song appeared on his 1965 album "Bringing It All Back Home."

From The White House blog:

On this Memorial Day weekend, President Obama calls on the American people to join him in paying tribute to America’s veterans, servicemen and women – particularly those who have made the ultimate sacrifice - and their families.

Transcript below the fold.

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