20070516 War Critic's Son Dies In Iraq

War Critic's Son Dies In Iraq

BOSTON, May 16, 2007

(AP) Andrew Bacevich repeatedly railed against the Iraq war in op-ed columns and interviews, calling it a "catastrophic failure." But the Boston University professor rarely, if ever, said that his son was serving in the conflict.

Friends say he did so to protect Andy Bacevich Jr. and to avoid any question that he was proud of his son's service.

Bacevich, himself a veteran of Vietnam and the Gulf wars, learned this week that his 27-year-old son had been killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Bacevich's critiques of the war have been measured, with the professor emphasizing that the war's architects are not evil but disastrously mistaken….

[…]

But Bacevich, a West Point graduate and retired lieutenant colonel, would never have tried to discourage his son from joining the Army…

"He had the highest regard for people who wore the uniform," Goldstein said. "The appreciation for what the military does is differentiated from his opposition to the conduct of this particular war."

[…]

After graduating from BU in 2003, Bacevich worked in politics, first as an intern for the late Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and later as a legislative aide to then-Gov. Mitt Romney…

The elder Bacevich, a conservative, viewed the war as a delusional overreach…

Bacevich was not available for an interview, and the family has referred all requests for information to a National Guard spokesman. In his only public comment since his son's death, Bacevich told the Boston Herald: "He joined the Army to serve his country in a time of need. We love him and mourn his loss."

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