Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials -- May 30, 2011

Nathaniel Marley, 4, visits the grave of his grandfather and other servicemen and women at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery with his father, Army veteran Bruce Marley of San Diego. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times / May 29, 2011)

Forgetting Why We Remember -- David W. Blight, New York Times

MOST Americans know that Memorial Day is about honoring the nation’s war dead. It is also a holiday devoted to department store sales, half-marathons, picnics, baseball and auto racing. But where did it begin, who created it, and why?

At the end of the Civil War, Americans faced a formidable challenge: how to memorialize 625,000 dead soldiers, Northern and Southern. As Walt Whitman mused, it was “the dead, the dead, the dead — our dead — or South or North, ours all” that preoccupied the country. After all, if the same number of Americans per capita had died in Vietnam as died in the Civil War, four million names would be on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, instead of 58,000.

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Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials

What We Might Remember This Memorial Day -- Victor David Hanson, NRO

Veterans and their loved ones at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery recall service, sacrifice -- Tony Perry, L.A. Times

History Is the Soldier's Gift. Remember where our heroes fell, and why. -- John Hayward, Human Events

Among the Graves This Memorial Day -- New York Times editorial

Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? -- Robert Fisk, The Independent

Can Turkey Unify the Arabs? -- Anthony Shadid, New York Times

For Israelis, 'defensible' border means more land -- Dan Williams, Arab News/Reuters

Was my son's death in Afghanistan a price worth paying? -- Stuart Alexander, The Independent

Pyongyang's dependency on Beijing -- Ting Kim, Korea Times

Russia ‘reset’= Giving the thugocracy whatever it wants -- Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

Kosovo heads for ruin while its watchdog looks on -- Andrea Capussela, The Guardian

Obama's Europe tour raises question of how much U.S. can afford to help -- Steven Thomma, McClatchy News

Is Obama above the law? -- George Will, Washington Post

Robert Gates Says Enough -- Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly, Weekly Standard

Why lower Saudi oil prices kill alternative energy -- IBTimes

Will America Suffer the Fate of Rome? -- Robert Klein Engler, American Thinker