A
heart-wrenching piece from the Baltimore Sun reminds us that death is still a daily occurance, and that the families of soldiers are demanding answers that are not forthcoming:
Standing on the porch outside his Gwynn Oak residence, Marion Flint Sr. speaks softly and slowly about his only son, his namesake, who was killed in a roadside explosion while serving in Iraq.But inside, Flint is angry.
That his 29-year-old son, Staff Sgt. Marion Flint Jr., on his second tour of duty for the Army, had to go to Iraq again for a war that he says seems so futile infuriates him.
"It's not just my child; it's everybody's child," said Mr. Flint, 49, clasping hands with his wife, B.J. Flint, 50.
Sound familiar?
It should.
For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.
We are the keepers of our soldiers and their families. When Mr. Flint stands on his porch and laments his son's death for a war no one believes in, we all must lament. Is a nation powerless to keep its sons and daughters out of harm's way?
Obama's speech was a hit for a reason, it reasonated and spoke against everything the conservatives would have the American people hate about our Party. We are compassionate. We do care about the Flints, not just in a letter of thanks signed by an autopen, but in a deep way. The GOP hates that the Democratic party is the Party that has the ability to reach out on these very moral issues. George Will wrote some screed about it today, warning the GOP away from feeling comfortable about controlling some fictitious "value voter" population.
The American people want to care about their neighbors, and they want to believe that they have the power to stop their loved ones from dying for a cause they don't believe in.
"What we believe in don't matter," said Sergeant Flint's wife, LaShaviea Danielle Flint, 30, who lives in Garner, N.C., with their children, Dyamond, 11, and Malik, 3. "He had to go regardless. But he didn't believe in going over there. We're against Bush all the way."
How did it come to this, with war widows feeling powerless and fathers seething with rage?
And how did it pass that the Democratic party doesn't stand up EVERY DAY and ask for answers from the Republican Party and the Bush administration?
The family had been preparing for him to return for two weeks in July. He was to come home for good in November. Now, the preparations are for his body to arrive and for arranging a funeral."He shouldn't have been over there," Marion Flint Sr. said. "They never found any weapons of mass destruction, so what's the point? Why now do they have all these kids over there? Why are they still fighting? Why? I want an answer."
As I wrote this diary, breaking news on CNN came through that four more Americans were killed in Iraq, along with an Iraqi translator.
Here's to hoping that the Democrats start talking the values that matter. That Barack Obama gets up every day to make a speech like he made in July of 2004. That other Democrats join him.
The GOP doesn't have an answer, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask the question. "Why did Mr. Flint's son die in vain? And how many more must do the same? Are we not our soldiers' keepers?"