Remember

At the end of last week, the U.S. Congress passed an Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, more fondly known as the Iraq Supplemental, to extend funding the war in Iraq for another few months.

Regardless of your opinion on the war, Louisianians must remember that this bill included $6.4 billion for Gulf Coast recovery. It delivers the much needed waiver of the Stafford Act, which will release communities from paying a ten percent match to federal recovery dollars. Emergency spending to make up for previous shortfalls is the purpose of Emergency Supplementals. Government spending like fulfilling the federal commitment to the man-made and natural disasters of the hurricanes two summers go is the reason this kind of legislation exists. The President has chosen this funding mechanism to continue to pay for the conflict. Consequently, spending must be renewed in a few months, and this bill marks the first time that Congress has proposed meaningful opposition to our engagement in Iraq.

I was in fifth grade during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. We were taught faithfully by our teachers and relatives the importance of remembering the men and women who sacrifice everything to fight for our country. Due to the brevity of the fight, many of us did not learn firsthand what it meant to honor a soldier’s sacrifice.

I am now past the age of many of those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we have all been affected, losing family or lovers or close junior high friends from down the block, though in a magnitude different than our parents’ generation during Vietnam. Because of our age, Iraq will nonetheless become a defining period in many of our lives. And through the way both civilians and soldiers in our generation document our lives through Facebook, blogs, or MySpace, we are finding new ways to stand together and mourn our heroes.

For some fallen soldiers, only their MySpace profiles remain, serving as memorials for those left behind. Comment threads display public grief and dreams unfulfilled to be read by anyone. Often the frozen words of the deceased are left untouched to solace the living:

Army Pfc. Johnathon Millican of Trafford, Ala., wrote on his MySpace page before he was killed in Karbala, Iraq: “You don’t have to love the war but you have to love the warrior.”

What is the proper way to honor the memory of a fallen soldier? Americans in our military know that they may not survive, and they are honored to know that they participate in something larger than themselves. Once gone, is unequivocal military success the only way to honor them? Americans in the service trust their commanders and fellow soldiers to protect them in every way possible. War necessitates heroic loyalty. At what point should the people, whose freedom our armed forces were created to protect, demonstrate their loyalty by forging a peace for civilian and soldier alike?

Each honest American reflects on war and memorializes the fallen in their own way. This Memorial Day, avoid focusing on the shortcomings of how others choose to honor our troops. Use today to explore your own memorial, be it inward or outward, and what it might mean for those unwavering heroes who continue serving America to this day.