Memorial Day, the most solemn of American civic commemorations, is one week away. Almost as if anticipating this moment, news continues to arrive of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, like some tragic messenger from the battlefield. Men who have recently made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq include Private Daniel Courneya, Private Christopher Murphy and Sergeant James Connell, all killed by al Qaeda in Mahmoudiya. The grief of the families of these soldiers is beyond compare. Indelibly etched upon their souls, it cannot be assuaged by mere words nor even by the passage of time. The sorrow will linger on, long after these current wars have subsided into the pages of history and settled into our national collective memory.

We are reminded, at trying times like these, of Priam’s plaintive appeal to Achilles for the return of the body of his son, Hector, slain in single combat outside the walls of Troy. Homer records Priam’s plea in The Iliad:

I have had the noblest sons of Troy, but I say not one of them is left to me… violent Ares broke the strength in the knees of most of them. One guarded my city and people, that one you killed a few days since as he fought in defense of his country, Hector; and for whose sake I come now to the ships of the Acheans to win him back from you, and I bring gifts beyond number. Honor then, the gods, Achilles, and take pity upon me, remembering your own father.

Stirred by the King of Troy’s request, Achilles handed over Hector’s body for a proper burial. Today, alas, Priam’s loss is being replayed across our nation, as fathers mourn their sons and mothers mourn their daughters. Some Americans wonder why this must be so. This is a wholly natural response — to question the utility of conflict, to rage at the mercilessness of war. Still, within the depths of these tragedies perhaps we can discern some meaning in the deaths of our fellow Americans, and, as a people, take solace from how they lived their lives. They reflect the very best qualities of our free society. Liberators, not conquerors, they took an oath to defend not a tyrant, but our Constitution, and all of the natural rights it embodies. A strong bond links the fallen of today in an unbreakable chain: in death, as in life, they are the soldiers of a democratic nation.

The men and woman who remain on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan carry on this tradition. They, too, have pledged to defend our democracy. Because they leave the civilian world to enter the warrior’s profession, they may seem, at first glance, to be separate from the larger community. But this is not so. They are not distinct, they do not form a separate caste, like the mercenary Hessians of the Revolutionary War or the Nazi SS of World War II. They are citizen soldiers, an integral part of our republic. As such, when they die in battle, we are all diminished; when they give up their lives, we all relinquish a part of our selves. Yet in death there is hope. We gain from their valor that which they intended: the preservation of our freedom and our way of life.

What is more, today’s soldiers, and the democratic fallen, now occupy a prominent place in a long tradition of American liberators, extending from the American Revolution to Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The Civil War was a touchstone in this legacy. Academic historians write that it was about sectionalism, or economics, or politics. These may have been its sources, but Abraham Lincoln knew what lay at its core, and stated as much in his Second Inaugural Address: before the conflict, slavery “constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.” Union soldiers fought to preserve the Union, but also to end human bondage. A letter penned by a Michigan infantryman during General William Sherman’s March to the Sea, and sent to his wife shortly before he was killed in the summer of 1864, encapsulates this American legacy of liberation: “The more I learn of the cursed institution of slavery, the more I feel willing to endure for its final destruction…After this war is over, this whole country will undergo a change for the better…Abolishing slavery will dignify labor; that fact of itself will revolutionize everything…let Christians use all their influence to have justice done to the black man.”

Today, American fighting men and women maintain this spirit. Sean Sullivan, a member of the United States Marine Corps Reserve in Connecticut, served in Najaf in the early months of Operation Iraq Freedom. “I will always remember proudly,” he says, “that I helped to free a nation.” Others like him continue to join the military, even in face of imminent battle. This author’s own Army Reserve unit is at full capacity, its ranks filled with soldiers who are motivated by duty, honor, country. They possess an intuitive grasp of the malevolent nature of our enemies. They comprehend that we are in the midst of a global campaign on whose outcome depends the viability of democratic life. They understand that as mere mortals we struggle at times to find the right path through the maelstrom. They have answered the call of both our president and our elected representatives in Congress, who, acting as the collective voice of our nation, sent our armed forces to war on September 18, 2001 and on October 14, 2002. Now, some people solicit Congress to withdraw from Iraq. It has the constitutional power to do so. This legitimate debate will be resolved democratically, by a self-governing people.

Meanwhile, let us honor those who have defended our right to self-government with their last breaths. We can do so on Memorial Day by attending to their families. We have a moral obligation to comfort those who bear the brunt of the suffering, pain, and grief of our age. Let us reach out to them, with humility.

One day, history will judge our decisions to intervene in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has already judged the democratic fallen — as champions not just of our time, but of all time. The same holds true for their families. Perhaps this Memorial Day, as our nation honors the sacrifices of their sons and daughters, they can find consolation in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, who so poignantly said in his Second Inaugural, as our bitter Civil War consumed all in its path, “the Almighty has his own purposes.”

– Joseph Morrison Skelly is a college history professor in New York City. An officer in the United States Army Reserve, he has completed a tour of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom.