{"id":1395,"date":"2004-10-25T17:59:50","date_gmt":"2004-10-26T00:59:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-10-25T17:59:50","modified_gmt":"2004-10-26T00:59:50","slug":"dying-for-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/25\/dying-for-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Dying for a Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/famulus.msnbc.com\/famulusintl\/ap10-25-092824.asp?reg=europe&#038;vts=102520040947\">Today&#8217;s dedication ceremony and reenactment<\/a> in Balaclava, Ukraine, in honor of the valiant charge by British cavalry during the Crimean War brings to mind once again Alfred, Lord Tennyson&#8217;s stirring poem of heroic duty.  &#8220;The Charge of the Light Brigade&#8221; has immortalized the consequences of a mistaken command on a battlefield; a &#8220;blunder,&#8221; as Tennyson puts it.  How this poem thrilled me as a child before I was aware of the true nature of war, how the horsemen of the Light Brigade bravely charged the enemy  cannons even though they knew they had been given a suicidal order by mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Who will be the poet to immortalize our brave troops in Iraq?  They too are charging into harm&#8217;s way based on a huge mistake, a momumental blunder; a war based on erroneous data and out-and-out lies, a war which should never have been started.  No one questions the courage of our troops, and a proud nation salutes their sense of duty.   But again, will there be a great poet to immortalize their sacrifice, or will they be silently forgotten to history as an uncomfortable reminder of a great mistake in judgment?<\/p>\n<p>Read the poem, and think of our troops over in Iraq:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/eserver.org\/poetry\/light-brigade.html\">The Charge of the Light Brigade<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s dedication ceremony and reenactment in Balaclava, Ukraine, in honor of the valiant charge by British cavalry during the Crimean War brings to mind once again Alfred, Lord Tennyson&#8217;s stirring poem of heroic duty. &#8220;The Charge of the Light Brigade&#8221; has immortalized the consequences of a mistaken command on a battlefield; a &#8220;blunder,&#8221; as Tennyson [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1395"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}