Is It Really A Wasted Life?

I've noticed lately that Leftyblogs tend to track stories that serve their purposes, and Rightyblogs do the same. Just check out memeorandum and you'll see what I'm talking about.

More specifically, note who's commenting on the op/ed A Life Wasted in this mornings WaPo: Skippy, TBogg, Preemptive Karma, etc. Are the conservatives afraid to deal with the issues raised by the piece? The piece, written by the father of Lance Cpl. Augie Schroeder, who was killed in Iraq, raises questions that are tough:

I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.

We conservatives are probably not commenting in part out of respect for the Schroeders, who have lost a son who appears to have been a great guy. As Augie's sister said,

"He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either."

How can we call the Schroeders wrong and say their son died for a good cause without disrespecting them and their son in the process? His death is not an opportunity, as Cindy Sheehan would have it, to score points on the war; it is a personal tragedy that demands respect.

Still, it is a personal tragedy played out against a larger picture. Mr. Schroeder has chosen to use his son's death to question our military strategy. In doing so, he is choosing to listen to one side of the Iraq strategy argument held by a few disaffected generals, and also to ignore the fact that strategies have changed and continue to change in order to deal with the realities of the battlefield.

All that aside, Augie Schroeder stood up when his country called, and he died doing the right thing. His parents can question whether a different strategy could have saved their son, and they can grieve for what would have happened if he had returned from Iraq to live a full life.

But his life was not wasted. Iraq is a critical field of battle, and of influence, in the global war on terror. The fact that Augie Schroeder and other American soldiers are there is making all the difference in the world, and what they are doing is definitely not a waste.