First, I don't know Andrew Bacevich personally. I'm familiar with him in the way that many of us are: as a vet, distinguished member of the military and now a professor at Boston University.
Bacevich has been an outspoken and very knowledgeable opponent of the war. He brings to each discussion about the war a steady voice and hard reason. His opinions have been followed in this blog and at The Scribe.
This morning the news came that his son has just been killed in Balad in an explosion.
We all feel grief at the deaths we read about. I'm feeling particular sorrow this morning for Professor Bacevich and his family. A military colleague of Bacevich, learning the news, was "shaken," his academic colleagues "devastated." There is something particularly poignant when a family is subject to a loss of this kind and one doesn't see nylon flags waving, patriotism on dubious display, but just the grief associated with the reality of losing someone in a war begun by amoral fantasists and liars. If there was anything in particular Bacevich showed in his opinions about the war, it was a clear sense of reality.
It's impossible to avoid feeling deep anger along with grief for the Bacevich's loss.
The Boston Globe has the whole story.
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More Bacevich:
On the influence of the neocons
"Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable"
"Civilian control has been a paramount value"
"The fundamental divide in American politics today is not between left and right but between those who subscribe to the myth of the 'American Century' and those who do not"
"The Iraq Study Group is nothing more than a damage control outfit"
