"I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose."

Andrew J. Bacevich contemplates the accusation -- "a staple of American political discourse" -- that his vocal opposition to the war caused his son's death. You might expect him to say the accusation is repulsive, and he was, in fact, trying to stop the war, which might have saved his son. But he goes beyond that:

After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions....

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics....

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

That is, his anti-war activism couldn't have had any causal relationship to the death of his son because American politics are so beholden to the rich that it has no effect. These are dark, despairing thoughts by a man whose son has died. Is he finding some comfort in his own ineffectuality? But he still writes. It's not nothing, though it is powerful writing to say it's "nothing." That your arguments have not persuaded powerful individuals to abandon their deep commitments does not mean that they never listen and never respond.