As is their custom, the national TV news programs spent the Memorial Day weekend offering tributes to U.S. soldiers and their families. CNN introduced us to Marine Lieutenant Andrew Kinard, “an officer in the true tradition of the Marines,” who, despite having lost all of his left leg and most of his right one, had not lost his sense of humor. CBS reported on Rolling Thunder, an annual throng of motorbikers who roar into Washington with “a nonpartisan message of honor and support for all who serve.” NBC told of a Texas program that allows soldiers in Iraq to view their children’s high school graduations via videoconferencing. And ABC profiled Jan Donahue, a military wife who, during the seventeen months of her husband’s deployment, had lost her job, exhausted her savings, undergone surgery for kidney stones, and worked to keep the bank from foreclosing on her home. When her husband’s tour was extended, she decided to fight “loneliness with laughter” by becoming a stand-up comic; through her performances, she has found “comfort in comedy.”

Watching all this, it was nearly impossible to tell that America had entered the fifth year of a calamitous war that has divided the nation, chewed up the armed forces, turned America into an international pariah, caused the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and been judged by some historians to be the most serious foreign-policy blunder in U.S. history. About two-thirds of Americans believe the war is no longer worth fighting. Yet on TV there was barely a trace of debate, hardly a whiff of dissent, virtually no hint of anger or discontent, outrage, or sense of betrayal. Everything was wrapped in the gauze of national unity, patriotic duty, and quiet courage.

Needless to say, Memorial Day does offer an occasion to...

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