One year ago

Slightly under a year ago, I was asked to write a small piece, not a memorial but a memory. It was intended to have been read in a memorial Roman Catholic mass, which I'm sure would have simultaneously annoyed and amused its subject. For reasons never understood, it was not read, and I saved it for today.

( The text of the memory )

I add this now.

( Two verses )

A commonplace I've been seeking for the last several months

For the last several months, I've been trying to find the original text of a sentiment that I've had brought to mind frequently, and finally I got it.

It is from noted anti-war writer David Drake; it was originally written down in the afterword to his novel Counting the Cost (1987), though I'd heard him say various forms of it before and after that.

When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do.
And if the implications of that bother you, the time to do something about it is before you decide to send him out.

I've been paraphrasing this as "When you fight a war, you are allowing your foreign policy to be created by scared eighteen-year-olds with guns", which puts the emphases in different places. I like Drake's particular phrasing a great deal and I'm glad to have it settled.