An innocent Christian Golczynski holds back his tears while receiving his father’s burial flag. The pressures, the morning, the hardships, to come are not yet evident to this boy who has just become “the man” of the household. This young boy of eight for the time being only feels the hurt, the loneliness, the anger of losing his father. Why is it that across the U.S. thousands of children, young boys, are inheriting duty of the man of the house? Has the revenge and pride for our country lead us into a war we had no busy fighting? More specifically is the war in Iraq worth the life of Christian’s father and the 4263 other heartbroken families across the United States. The Daily News Journal, a Rutherford County newsprint, originally published the photo of young Christian Golczynski courageously accepting the American flag that covered his father’s casket.
It has become common today to lose sight of the reason the United States went to war with Iraq. Several years ago, the standard way of thinking about the war in Iraq was that we were looking for weapons of mass destruction, terrorist and those who harbor terrorist. However, today many Americans tend to believe that we went war with Iraq for oil, to catch Saddam, while others feel that President George W. Bush needed to prove to something to his father.
It is often said that children of fallen soldiers should be proud of their parent’s service to our country, while the hardship these children may have to endure is frequently over looked. Propaganda images, similar to this one, flooded newspapers and the internet after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. As Americans we rallied together, backed our leaders and with pride went in search of revenge. The pride and our drive to “get’em” was taken advantage of by many politians and used to receive American support for a war, many Americans now believe we don’t belong fighting. So if we do not belong in Iraq fighting a war that is not ours, are our beloved soldiers dying for a cause that is not ours. On the contrary, there is a large minority that feels that we should be in Iraq, and that our U.S. soldiers are making progress in ridding the world of terrorist while stopping those countries that promote and harbor terrorist. It’s ultimately the children of our heroic military men and women who will have to come to terms the loss of their beloved parents. If the hidden goal of the United States was to remove Saddam from power, which we accomplished why is it that we still have an overwhelming government military and private military presence in Iraq? Well some Americans’ view, including Christian’s father (http://www.iraqwarheroes.com/golczynski.htm) felt that we need to finish the job we started. However this opens the issue of whether the U.S. should be the government that democratizes the world. And if it is not our place to govern the world, then are our American soldiers dying in vain? My own view is that our soldiers our dying for a cause that is not American. Though I concede that children of fallen soldiers should be proud, I still maintain U.S. soldiers are dying in vain.
