QOTW

Marguerite Kelly, mother of columnist/Atlantic editor Michael Kelly who was killed in Iraq four years ago, on Atlantic's web site:

And what about the deaths of our military in Iraq? If Mike thought that this war wasn’t worth the loss of 3,300 American lives, what would he say about the 620,000 men and boys who died in the Civil War or the 407,300 American soldiers who died in World War II? Would he say that we should have cut our country in two and let the South have slaves? That we should have let Hitler rule all of Europe and let him kill any Jews that were left?

Whatever Mike’s take on the Mideast would be today, this much is clear: he knew that holocausts start small; that evil is real; that somebody has to stand up and stop it, and that others must watch and tell the world that evil had really been stopped. And sometimes, he said, good people would die in the doing.

That our son was one of them still breaks our hearts, but we can’t say that his death was unfair. If we did, we would have to say that it was unfair that he had enjoyed life so thoroughly; that he had such a fine career, such an excellent wife and such jolly, healthy sons and that he had parents and three sisters who loved him so much. Mike knew you can’t always have it both ways. And so did we.