On Friday, Christina and I watched “Lone Survivor,” also a best-selling memoir based on the harrowing experience of the eponymous lone navy seal who survived the ill-fated Operation Red Wings—a 2005 military operation that cost the lives of 19 members of the U.S. Military’s Special Operations community. The movie was emotionally jarring and exceptionally well done. It also, however, sparked a much needed conversation about the responsibility inherited by the living to carry on with the Just Cause of the fallen.
The question on the table is this: did the men of Operation Red Wings die in vain?
In the wake of the movie’s release, there was much fervor over a January 12th exchange between the true Lone Survivor, Marcus Lutrell, and CNN’s Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper. Tapper implied the senselessness in how the men “up on that mountain” died in vain, seeing how the Afghanistan war lacks national conviction and strategic direction, and, perhaps most damning, has lost public support. By this time in the interview, a quite offended and visibly angry Navy Seal, Lutrell, responded while a helpless Mark Wahlberg looked on, "We spend our whole lives training to defend this country, and then we were sent over there by this country, and you're telling me because we were over there doing what we were told by our country that it was senseless and my guys died for nothing?"
In a larger sense, the true question is: can the sacrifices of our brave men and women in Uniform—sacrifices which include, as President Lincoln once noted, the full and costliest measure of sacrifice “laid upon the altar of freedom,” one’s life—ever be made in vain if our nation loses sight of the meaning and purpose of the sacrifice?
In a well circulated Foreign Policy article, author and journalist Jim Gourley succinctly answered Mr. Lutrell’s question in just the title of his piece, “Yes Marcus. They Did Die in Vain;” He continues to eloquently state in though painful terms the reason he believes this to be true. His article, though well written and reasonably balanced, also misses the mark.
Are we really so pretentious, so narcissistic a society as to suggest that by our action—or inaction—we possess the power to add or detract from the honor of a sacrifice that is made in the spirit of something larger than ourselves? As Lincoln famously stated on the occasion to dedicate a plot of land as a national ceremony in honor of Gettysburg’s fallen: “…we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate–we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.” He continues in a later portion of his address, “…from these honored dead we [should] take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” This might come as a surprise to many, but the sacrifices made by both the living and fallen are not about us—the people. And, when we fail to honor their sacrifice through word and deed, we can do little to dishonor them, but rather, to do much to dishonor ourselves. When we fail, as many suggest we may in Iraq and Afghanistan, it does little to shame the sacrifices of our service members, but rather, does greatly to shame ourselves.
As the American song writer Julie Ward Howe wrote in the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “As [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;” You see, such a sacrifice is necessarily made in the same spirit of Christ's death on the cross. As is commonly stated, God is love, and, as it is remarked in the Gospels, no greater love can one possess than for him or her to lay down their life for another—as in the case of an ill-fated operation that cost our nation 19 brave sons who each loved their country in so complete a way as to fashion their final act as the fullest and costliest measure of devotion to duty.
How can a sacrifice made in the spirit of the greatest of virtues and fully enshrined with the eternal sovereignty of the Creator ever be made in vain? The answer: it cannot. It is rather for the living to increase in devotion in the spirit of love, the same of which our bravest men and women willingly paid the ultimate price; it is rather that our nation—the last best hope for peace in our world—should remain unwaveringly committed to a national will grounded in the transcendental value of love.
