Leaders Must Exercise Care, Forethought Before Sending Troops Into Harm’s Way
Michael McKenna | May 25, 2025
(The Washington Times) — On Monday, we celebrate Memorial Day, the civic holy day we set aside each year to commemorate those who died fighting our wars. It is a day for somber reflection of the sacrifice — more than 1 million service members — that has been made over the course of our nation’s history.
This commemoration began on June 3, 1861, when the then recently dug grave of John Quincy Marr, a captain in the Virginia militia and the first combat fatality in the Civil War, was decorated in Warrenton, Virginia. Marr had been killed two days earlier at the Battle of Fairfax Courthouse.
The practice of decorating the graves of their honored war dead would soon sweep both North and South. Although many have claimed to be the first to observe Decoration Day, the National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, credits Mary Ann Williams with the idea of decorating the graves of soldiers with flowers.
Williams, like millions of others, suffered greatly during the Civil War. Her husband led Confederate troops in Virginia and ultimately returned to Columbus, Georgia, where he died in February 1862. The widow Williams visited her husband’s grave frequently and, along with her daughter, decorated other soldiers’ graves with flowers.
A generation after the Civil War, almost every state had adopted Decoration Day, and Memorial Day finally became a federal holiday in 1971.
It is altogether fitting that we remember those who died on behalf of the nation. It is also fitting that we are conscious of the fact that the wars in which they died, and American involvement in those wars, were not predestined by God. They were the consequence of choices made by American citizens and their leaders.
The Civil War, the unhappy impetus behind Decoration Day, was without a doubt the single greatest public policy failure in American history. Every other nation in this hemisphere, from Argentina to Canada, freed their slaves in the first half of the 19th century, and none of them required bloodshed to do so.
Solid arguments can be made (and were made at the time) that we either bumbled or were managed into World War I and that our involvement in World War II was a direct result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s aggressive trade embargo on Japan. Toward the end of that war, Roosevelt made it clear to our allies (which included the murderous and rapacious Soviet Union) that we would accept Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. This is especially odd, given that the stated purpose of the war in Europe was to prevent the Germans from setting up precisely such a regime in the middle of the continent.
In Korea and Vietnam, American foreign policy elites and the officer corps seemed largely indifferent to victory. Americans gave their lives in Korea to solidify what was supposed to be a temporary border between south and north. In Vietnam, the accelerating moral corrosion of the elites and the unwillingness of the officer corps to alert the public to that corrosion led to absolute defeat. Both wars were dramatic failures of our political leadership.
It’s a safe bet that those who died in Korea and Vietnam — and Iraq and Afghanistan — would rather have remained alive. Or, if their lot was to die, they would have preferred to die in a victorious effort.
The courage and willingness of American soldiers, sailors and Marines to sacrifice has always been exemplary, from the men who crossed the Delaware River with George Washington that Christmas in 1776 right up to the daring and skill routinely displayed by our armed forces all over the world today.
The prudential capacity of our political leadership has always been much less certain.
On this Memorial Day, think about the graves of our brave and capable soldiers, Marines and sailors, and then reflect on each citizen’s responsibility to exercise great care and forethought before allowing our political leaders to send our fellow citizens into harm’s way.
