THESE THOUGHTS I HAVE...

      I had two immediate thoughts upon reading the news of the Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan which took the lives of 30 American soldiers and finding out that some of those who had died were from Navy Seal Team Six, the very same team which was responsible for assassinating Osama bin Laden on May 2nd of this year was just this feeling of being annoyed that these people we've been stuck fighting against for the past ten years can now rejoice for avenging bin Laden's killing. It annoys me that the story does not end with the United States successfully avenging the deaths of the 3000+ lives taken on September 11th (as well as those lives lost in previous al Qaeda attacks on the U.S.S. Cole and the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya for instance). No, it ends with several of our rightfully declared heroes being killed in action by the very enemy whose head they had so recently cut off. But then I realized this has happened before many times over.

        The first one I thought of is perhaps the biggest one of all: the triumphant taking of Mt. Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. I would say up until the moon landing, the photo of the second flag raising taken by Joe Rosenthal was the most iconic American photograph ever taken. It would seem an ideal vignette to have put on the back of our paper money for the Bicentennial if they hadn't stopped at the quarter, half dollar, dollar coin, and $2 bill. I'd say the $50 only because President Grant was a formal general - military theme for military theme. But there's a sadness immediately inherent to that moment captured in time. Of the six flag raisers, three would be killed within a month of its raising on February 23, 1945.

     The statistics of that battle are horrifying (21,844 Japanese soldiers out of 22,060 were KIA or committed suicide and 6,800 American soldiers were killed out of the 26,000 who landed) and though I'm sure all six of those soldiers would never have claimed to be heroes, they very much were at the very least in terms of propaganda value. The three survivors were brought home to raise money for bond drives but didn't take to the adulation well, Ira Hayes least of all. He was the first of the survivors to die at age 32.

      I'm sure the members of Navy Seal Team Six also do not feel like heroes and probably also would not care much for the adulation of the American public, but I still can't help think they deserved at least some of that. I don't know the details of who died as of this writing - it's sad enough some of that team will not be able to return home triumphant, but it would seem especially sad if the one who killed bin Laden was among them...