The gaffe that wasn’t

I generally don’t think much of Obama, but he shouldn’t have had to do this:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is apologizing for saying the lives of the more than 3,000 U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war were “wasted.”

During his first campaign trip this weekend, the Illinois senator told a crowd in Iowa: “We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.”

He immediately apologized on Sunday, saying the remark was “a slip of the tongue.”

During an appearance Monday in Nashua, N.H., he apologized again, telling reporters he meant to criticize the civilian leadership of the war, not those serving in the military.

“Slip of the tongue” my ass, that was the kind of unvarnished truth lacking from him until now.

Consider who joins the military — generally people who believe at least in the abstract that they would be fighting to defend the US. Not for “national strategic interest” (read: theft of resources and violation of sovereignty), nor to fight wars of “liberation” (read: interfere in the issues of people we know squat about and violate sovereignty), but to fight off legitimate threats to their country and their people. If you think you’re serving that purpose, get sent to Iraq — a nation that is not and was not a threat to the US — and you get killed, then in effect you died for a lie. You signed up to potentially sacrifice your life for the safety of your friends & family back home, and instead sacrifice it for some crackpot scheme cooked up by people who wouldn’t so much as piss on you if you were on fire, how else can it possibly be put to where it wouldn’t obscure the point?

Shame on whoever thought it offensive, and shame on him for taking it back.