On Monday, President Obama commemorated Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, declaring “Today we come together as Americans to pray, to reflect and to remember these heroes.” But across the country in San Diego, his GOP rival Mitt Romney joined John McCain at a gathering of veterans to instead deliver a not-so-thinly-veiled attack on the President. But if his message that the U.S. must not “shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs” sounds familiar, it should. After all, back in 2000 George W. Bush deployed the same “hollow military” myth to win the battle for the White House.

On Monday morning, PBS Newshour announced, “Presidential Campaigns Pause to Honor Veterans on Memorial Day.” Unfortunately, that story was published before Mitt Romney addressed the audience at the Memorial Day Center Museum in San Diego. As ABC reported, Romney did not pause for a cease-fire (around the 11:00 mark in the video above):

“We have two courses we can follow,” said Romney. “One is to follow the pathway of Europe. To shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs. And they of course rely on the strength of America and they hope for the best. Were we to follow that kind of course, there would be no one that could stand to protect us.”

“The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world,” he said. “We choose that course. We choose that course for America not just so that we can win wars, but so we can prevent wars. Because a strong America is the best deterrent to war that ever has been invented.”

As the chart below the fold shows, core U.S. defense spending (that is, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan war funding in red) has risen during every year of the Obama administration. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney announced last fall, "I will reverse President Obama's massive defense cuts." Then during last week's NATO summit in Chicago, Romney penned an op-ed to charge:

"The United States [is] on a path to a hollow military."

If that sound bite rings a bell, it should. That's because the same slander was a centerpiece of Texas Governor George W. Bush's successful campaign 12 years ago.

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We're not really allowed to have an adult conversion about war because political adversaries are so eager to use our words to polarize and attack -- which is what happened to Chris Hayes yesterday when he discussed his discomfort with the word "hero" during his Memorial Day segment. He has since issued this statement:

On Sunday, in discussing the uses of the word "hero" to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don't think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I've set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.

As many have rightly pointed out, it's very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday's show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.

But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.

Chris Hayes opens his Sunday show with the origins of Memorial Day. Funnily enough, this is the first time I've heard the freed slaves aspect of its inception. The history I've always been told revolved around women decorating the graves of fallen soldiers, presumably grieving widows and mothers. To his credit, Hayes reminds us that there are civilian casualties that we have no holiday for but whom we cannot forget as well.

My retired Air Force general grandfather took Memorial Day very seriously. He had seen his share of sacrifices by his fellow troops; he was still haunted by the ghosts of his own service. And there was nothing he could say that would express the magnitude of how his service impacted his life to those of us outside of the military. He felt a kinship with all service members for their shared experience.

That's one of the reasons that I do the In Memoriam segment each week. It's my little nod to my late grandfather, to the ethos he passed on to his children and grandchildren. I don't want the parents, spouses and children of those still overseas to think for a minute that we don't know and grieve for their loss.

I have never supported this mission, openly asking for someone to explain what we're doing in intellectually honest terms. But I've never blamed the service members for the political wrongs of those who sent them there.

And bless Chris for later bringing up the shameful and media-hidden number of suicides of our soldiers in Afghanistan. To date, 164 service members have killed themselves in Afghanistan. But that is only part of the story. Here, in the US, returned veterans are killing themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes, a horrifying indictment of how they've been abandoned by the country that asked them to sacrifice everything.

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I found this picture online, but no information about it. It's one of the most powerful pictures I've seen.

This is something I wrote for Memorial Day 2005 and I run it every year:

Soldiers are not chunks of identical clay; each of them has a story, their own reasons for being caught in a war.

Brave? Maybe - sometimes, under some conditions. Scared, mostly. The younger they are, the more likely their presence had to do with restlessness, cockiness. The need to be part of a winning team, the desire to even a score. Kick ass, take names. Kill them all, let God sort them out.

The older they are, the more realistic they are. This was a steady paycheck, or a way to supplement the one they already had. When they join, it's with their eyes on the future benefit. When they're in the middle of a war, they think only of surviving the next five minutes. Please, God, please. Let me see my family again.

And when they die in the war, each death leaves a hole in the world. It's important to remember that, to not see them as a monolithic casualty list or as an acceptable loss.

No loss is acceptable. Ask the parents, the spouses, the children. They try. They tell themselves stories of nobility, sacrifice, a greater cause. They cover it up with the ritual rhetoric. But deep down, they must wonder.

Photo: Aaron Thompson

Here is how to count the cost: In high school graduation pictures that will never be replaced with wedding pictures. In wedding rings that will never be worn smooth by years. By the daughters who will walk down the aisle with an uncle or brother instead of Dad. By the sons who will find themselves angry and lost, not understanding why. The children who will hear about their mother's eyes, their father's chin but won't ever see themselves reflected in that face.

By the parents who now understand the quiet obscenity of outliving their own children.

Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them.

They mattered.

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On Memorial Day, we'll let the president's words speak for themselves.

But this passage was especially eloquent:

That’s what we memorialize today. That spirit that says, send me, no matter the mission. Send me, no matter the risk. Send me, no matter how great the sacrifice I am called to make. The patriots we memorialize today sacrificed not only all they had but all they would ever know. They gave of themselves until they had nothing more to give. It’s natural, when we lose someone we care about, to ask why it had to be them. Why my son, why my sister, why my friend, why not me?

These are questions that cannot be answered by us. But on this day we remember that it is on our behalf that they gave our lives -- they gave their lives. We remember that it is their courage, their unselfishness, their devotion to duty that has sustained this country through all its trials and will sustain us through all the trials to come. We remember that the blessings we enjoy as Americans came at a dear cost; that our very presence here today, as free people in a free society, bears testimony to their enduring legacy.

Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay. But we can honor their sacrifice, and we must. We must honor it in our own lives by holding their memories close to our hearts, and heeding the example they set. And we must honor it as a nation by keeping our sacred trust with all who wear America’s uniform, and the families who love them; by never giving up the search for those who’ve gone missing under our country’s flag or are held as prisoners of war; by serving our patriots as well as they serve us -- from the moment they enter the military, to the moment they leave it, to the moment they are laid to rest.

Full transcript below:

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(Photo courtesy of AP of Jonathan Leicht, left, and Jesse Leicht, right, pose with a photo of their brother, Marine Cpl. Jacob Leicht)

Not that any death is acceptable, but there's a sad irony to this news coming on Memorial Day Weekend:

The 1000th American serviceman killed in Afghanistan had already fallen once to a hidden explosive.

Marine Cpl. Jacob C. Leicht was driving his Humvee over a bomb in Iraq that punched the dashboard radio into his face and broke his leg in two places. He spent two painful years recovering from that 2007 blast. The 24-year-old had written letters from his hospital bed begging to be put back on the front lines, and died less than a month into a desperately sought second tour.

The Texas Marine's death marks a grim milestone in the Afghanistan war. He was killed this week when he stepped on a land mine in Helmand province that ripped off his right arm.

An Associated Press tally shows Leicht is the 1,000th U.S. serviceman killed in the Afghan combat, nearly nine years after the first casualty was also a soldier from the San Antonio area.

"He said he always wanted to die for his country and be remembered," said Jesse Leicht, his younger brother. "He didn't want to die having a heart attack or just being an old man. He wanted to die for something."

I wish I knew what that something was. Perhaps it might give some comfort to his family, but after nine years, I don't know what it is. I just hope that we don't have another 1,000 deaths to note before we finally re-think our involvement in Afghanistan.

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(h/t Russ, S&R)

I love love love Google Earth. I can easily spend hours swooping all over the globe, looking at satellite pictures of the homes of friends and family, favorite vacation spots and dream destinations.

Sean, part of the content design team for Google Earth, has put together a special application for the program that is perfect for this Memorial Day: Map the Fallen.

This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died. [..]

For this project I collected information from a number of sources, including the Department of Defense's Statistical Information Analysis Division, icasualties.org, MilitaryTimes.com's Honor the Fallen, Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen, the Iraq and Afghanistan Pages, and Legacy.com. I used the Google Maps and GeoNames.org geocoding services to get coordinates for each person's home of record and approximate place of death. The map includes data through March 2009. I'd like to point out the incredible time commitment the above organizations invest in maintaining this information; as I've learned, it is not an easy task. All of the data I have assembled and generated for this project will be made freely available for download in the near future.

During this project, I have sought the advice and perspectives of several groups directly tied to these losses, including Gold Star families, veterans' groups, active-duty servicemen and women, and leadership in the United States Army. I've done my best to incorporate their feedback and suggestions in creating something that pays tribute to the memory and service of these fallen heroes. Out of respect for the families of those people on this map who have taken their own lives, I have chosen to describe these deaths as coming from "non-combat" related causes. This is a broad category used by the Department of Defense to define other causes of death resulting from accidents or illness.

I recognize that this map is just a slice of the story in these conflicts. The Iraqi and Afghani people have incurred substantial civilian losses through these wars; there are also U.S. and Coalition civilians, contractors, and reporters who have died as well. For this project, I've chosen to focus on the U.S. and Coalition military casualties, but I recognize that the losses extend beyond what is mapped in this project.

Each figure on the map denotes a servicemember lost during the last six years. Tied to their hometown, each figure pops up a screen that gives information about that fallen troop. In addition, families can add photos, audio and a guestbook for others to give their remembrance and honor their service.

Please, take some time to look through Map the Fallen and honor the sad sacrifice these men and women have made.

[Ed. note: Please welcome to the C&L team our old friend Ian Welsh, whose work from the Agonist and FDL many of you many know. Ian will be writing whatever he chooses, but that usually means economics and international politics.]

It's Memorial Day. I gather for many it's just another long weekend, but I know that for many it's what Remembrance Day is for Canadians like myself: a day to remember those who have died in war. I won't say "died to protect our freedom" or any such trite BS, because with few exceptions, most wars had nothing to do with protecting anyone's freedom, but they did die, nonetheless, for us.

Their blood is on our hands, sticky and wet, and it will never dry. Why?

Because we live in democracies. Because we elected the leaders who sent them to war. Whether you think those wars are justified, or not, at the end of the day, we bear the collective guilt of their deaths. They died due to the decisions we made, the society we live in.

Oh, we can say "I did everything I could to oppose the war", whether that's Iraq or Vietnam, or some other war. But even if that's true, well, you failed, didn't you? (Didn't I?) And so off went the young men and women, and they died, or they were maimed, or their brain case got knocked around and they came back shaking, and they wake up screaming at night, and they can't control their emotions and they'll never be the same again.

It's one of the ironies of democracy that we're all responsible, collectively, and yet each of us, individually, can say "but not me, I voted against him" or "I protested against that policy". And because it's true, each of us can feel, in the end, that the deaths and suffering caused by our society, whether in war, or through a horrific medical system, or through abuses in the penal system, aren't our fault.

But is it true? Or is it true instead, that we failed, that we support the system with both our consent and our tax dollars, and that we are therefor complicit in what it does?

I don't know. But I do know this, on this Memorial day, even if it's not a Canadian holiday, I'm thinking of those who died, both soldiers and civilian.

And at the very least, I know I failed.

Julia Mathes, the widow of Army Specialist Marcus Mathes, drapes herself over his casket at Zephyrhills Municipal Airport. His body was flown in for his funeral and burial. (Photo - Christine Delessio)

This is something I wrote for Memorial Day 2005 and I run it every year:

Soldiers are not chunks of identical clay; each of them has a story, their own reasons for being caught in a war.

Brave? Maybe - sometimes, under some conditions. Scared, mostly. The younger they are, the more likely their presence had to do with restlessness, cockiness. The need to be part of a winning team, the desire to even a score. Kick ass, take names. Kill them all, let God sort them out.

The older they are, the more realistic they are. This was a steady paycheck, or a way to supplement the one they already had. When they join, it's with their eyes on the future benefit. When they're in the middle of a war, they think only of surviving the next five minutes. Please, God, please. Let me see my family again.

And when they die in the war, each death leaves a hole in the world. It's important to remember that, to not see them as a monolithic casualty list or as an acceptable loss.

No loss is acceptable. Ask the parents, the spouses, the children. They try. They tell themselves stories of nobility, sacrifice, a greater cause. They cover it up with the ritual rhetoric. But deep down, they must wonder.

Here is how to count the cost: In high school graduation pictures that will never be replaced with wedding pictures. In wedding rings that will never be worn smooth by years. By the daughters who will walk down the aisle with an uncle or brother instead of Dad. By the sons who will find themselves angry and lost, not understanding why. The children who will hear about their mother's eyes, their father's chin but won't ever see themselves reflected in that face.

By the parents who now understand the quiet obscenity of outliving their own children.

Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them.

They mattered.