Iraq Is Backdrop for Graduation Speakers: "...patriotism judged by love of country, not love of war"

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NYT: Commencement Speeches
Iraq Is Backdrop for Many Graduation Speakers
By ALAN FINDER
Published: June 10, 2007

For many if not most members of the class of 2007, the war in Iraq has been the constant background of their college years. And so as seniors graduated from thousands of colleges and universities in recent weeks, the war was on the mind of many commencement speakers. Some criticized its prosecution, others commended the sacrifices of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers serving in the armed forces, but few ignored the continuing struggle.

“Most of you were juniors in high school when terrorists attacked America in September 2001, and it became clear we were a nation at war,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told graduates at the United States Naval Academy. “With your credentials, you could have attended another prestigious university, and subsequently pursued a private life, with all its material rewards, your freedom and safety assured by other young men and women who volunteered to serve in the American military.”

Some speakers offered a critical view of the war and its consequences. Anthony W. Marx, the president of Amherst College, spoke at Amherst’s commencement of the lessons of the Roman empire, which he said declined when leaders turned away from civic action toward private pursuits, abdicating civil authority to the military.

“Always, our political reach, our cultural persuasion, our economic integration and our military might are bounded,” Dr. Marx said, drawing analogies between Rome’s decline and the present. “At those boundaries, smugness is challenged. If we fail to heed that challenge, if we do not learn from the limits of our victories, we risk the fate of Rome.”

Boyd Tinsley, an electric violinist in the Dave Matthews Band, told graduates at the University of Virginia, his alma mater, “I hope that you will once again bring us back to a time when a person’s patriotism was judged by how much they loved their country, and not by how much they loved war.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/us/10commencement.html?hp=&pagewanted=all