Bunker Hill, York Town, Cold Harbor, Antietam, The Ardens, Kasserine Pass, Anzio D Day, Iwo Jima, The Chosin Reservoir, Hamburger Hill, Tet, Afghanistan and Iraq. Every American must know what they mean.

Each a battle, defeats and victories, bathed in blood so that men might be free. Were they, are they worth the cost? In Iraq the number of our dead approaches 3,000.

That war, by the testimony of those who fight it, is fought for the freedom of the Iraqi people.

The gift of freedom must underlie the individual sacrifice of those who serve. If it does not then our soldiers sacrifice is for a lie evil in its purposes. If the war in Iraq is about possession then it is immoral, a horror too awful to contemplate. I cannot believe that.

Consider our own civil war, a multitude of men black and white died that slavery might die in America; so that possessions might one day be Americans. It could not have been just about states’ rights and the Union forever.

We recognize as a nation that the freedom they fought for was not assured by victory, only the possibility. Dr. Martin Luther King had to have a dream, he and others had to march and all must now seize the possibility of freedom and make it good in order to enjoy the fruits of freedom.

Almost 3,000 men and women have died over the course of four long years in Iraq. Ten thousand Americans died at Cold Harbor in less than a day. And after that those whose duty it was to soldier on and likely die voted to continue.

For them and myself I want the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the powerless empowered, the slave freed. I don’t want $50 a barrel oil.

In honor and memory of those who fought earlier and those who fight now, the full cost must be born.

Andrew F. Strachan

Machias