Memorial Day Dishonored

Written by Belinda Z.

Tuesday, 26 May 2009 08:22

In his Sunday radio address, President Barack Obama spoke of the national Memorial Day and of its significance to the men and women serving in the militia today. What he clearly failed to understand, however, is how the powers of war have been abused, contradicting the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend, as evidenced by his remark: "I will send our servicemen and women into harm’s way only when it is necessary.” This statement can be broken down into two parts for analysis:

1. "I will send our servicemen and women..." Note the emphasis on the sentence's subject: I. So the President dictates when we ought to employ the national militia? Not according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution: "Congress shall have power to...declare war." Can the facts be given more simply? Unfortunately, ever since the Korean War, Democratic and Republican presidents alike have simply followed the trend of their predecessors and sent out our servicemen and women all over the world.

2. "...into harm's way only when it is necessary." With a worldwide total of 195 countries, U.S. troops currently occupy 150 of those. Since we can't really have that many enemies (at least not yet), what in the world created these staggering figures? Is it really necessary to occupy that many places? Even when the causes seem legitimate—as in the case of more recent events such as Vietnam and the so-called War on Terrorism—a closer investigation proves that these affairs could have been easily avoided had we simply adopted a non-interventionist foreign policy like the one the founding fathers recommended long ago.

As we honor Memorial Day, we run the risk of incidentally affirming and accepting the decisions made by recent administrations about our military powers. Just because we have soldiers doesn't mean that we ought to simply deploy them wherever we like, which at this point has been going on for decades. At the local city parade I saw a series of banners declaring that we once fought to defend our freedoms; now we fight to gain them back. By returning to a constitutional, liberty-promoting foreign policy we will not only give back Memorial Day its due honor—we will make every day an opportunity to reflect on our national pride.

Writing for fun and for profit since childhood, Belinda Z. is a homeschooled high school student who is a strong advocate for constitutionally-limited government and hopes to make a difference in politics someday.

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