Today, June 6, 2006, is the 62nd anniversary of what has been dubbed "the Longest Day". After years of fighting in World War II, the Allies mounted one of the most well coordinated and largest offensives ever to establish beachheads in France to move inward and destroy the Third Reich.

The Allied victory didn't come without cost, though. 1465 US soldiers died, 3184 were left wounded, with 1928 missing and 26 captured. The entire Allied forces suffered around 10000 casualties in that single day of fighting.

In this day and age when we question every action of our military with very little military knowledge save repeated viewings of "Platoon" and "We Were Soldiers", it is compelling to ask how different D-Day might have been had we met it with the same cynicism we meet current military operations. I am not saying there is a parallel between Hitler's Germany and Hussein's Iraq, but certainly the two situations do not need to perfectly parallel to make us question our responses. What if the men of the Allied forces had been met with cameras and microphones denouncing us for attacking the German "freedom fighters" for simply trying to protect the homeland they had conquered in battle? What if the mothers of the soldiers who died in places like Omaha Beach and Utah Beach had stood up on a 24 hour news network and demanded that their children died to advance the financial interests of our leaders? What if a daily death count had been broadcast on the radio to announce our failures instead of the broadcasts that announced our successes? Would we have had the resolve to change the course of history by defeating one of the most evil regimes of all time?

While I insist that blind patriotism is not, in fact, patriotism, I would also insist that the questions we are asking about our current conflict are appropriate for certain times and places, and that much of what passes for the "anti-war" movement is not, in fact a movement that is ideologically opposed to war (where were these people during the FIRST Gulf War?), but is, in fact, a movement dedicated to undermining our government through popular opinion, and is, through their actions, weakening the nation.

As we commemorate D-Day and the sacrifices made on that singularly horrific and triumphant day, let us remember those who are serving overseas and measure our questions and criticisms with a respect for the troops and,  at least on some level, what they are trying to do.