Christian Leftist

Jared Hubbard and Jeremiah Baro were best friends who went to Iraq. They lived together, laughed together, and died together as snipers during the second year of the second Iraq War. Their families thought it fitting that they be buried together as well.

Now their Central California town is mourning the loss of Jared’s younger brother Nathan, only 24, who enlisted after Jared’s death with their older brother Jason. Nathan was one of 14 soldiers to die when his Blackhawk helicopter crashed due to mechanical failure; Jason arrived on the scene as a rescuer in time to discover that he was the last surviving son.

In a harrowing twist not unlike the plot of Saving Private Ryan, the military has ordered Jason to return home to his family to grieve, before some unseen, violent catastrophe takes the eldest Hubbard son from this earth.

It’s hard to imagine the odds of this kind of event happening more than once. I would think losing one son would have been sufficient service to this country, but the Hubbard brothers felt called to serve, and it’s far better to have people serving who want to be in a war than drafting those who don’t. Still, every tragic loss of life in Iraq seems so empty, so damning an indictment. What is it going to take to convince the rest of the country that we can no longer afford to spend people’s lives in this doomed pursuit?

At least if Bush is too stubborn to withdraw troops from the Middle East, he could consider pouring help into Afghanistan. At least there our military protection has some measure of public support. It’s not too late to save Karzai’s fledgling administration from the resurgence of the Taliban.

It’s cognitive dissidence at its worst. You say a story like this is a pointless loss of life, and conservatives jump on you for saying that ‘a soldier’s death was for nothing.’ It’s not so simple as that. Soldiers die serving their country; the administration that send them on a foolhardy assignment have made the specific outcomes of that task a waste of human life.

I wonder about all of the numerous lives the Hubbard brothers could have helped has they served in a mission that didn’t send them off to die.