CONTRARIAN

Hitchens: Whose Fault Are Veterans’ Deaths?

Many lives weren’t “given”; they were stolen.

In a weekend full of sentimental remembrances of veterans from both sides of the Atlantic, you can count on Slate’s Christopher Hitchens to shake things up. Revisiting the writings of Rudyard Kipling, who forced his nearly blind son to go to war, Hitchens wonders if the people we praise as having “given” their lives may actually have had their lives deliberately stolen. It’s important to remember them, either way. “But it’s still more important on such a day to discuss dissent, and to reflect on whether it might have been your own enemy, or your deeply mistaken father, who brought you bound to the pit and alive to the burning."