We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Memorial Day is dedicated to America's war dead, so it is a fitting time to reflect on the impact here at home of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to take the lives of U.S. soldiers.

Being at war does something to the national psyche, not all of it good. In the early days, there is unity. But as the end seemingly becomes ever more distant, dissent increases.

That is not a negative. With dissent come questions, and questions sprout answers that lead to greater understanding, and sometimes even a better course.

Eight years after the terrorist attacks on our soil that ultimately led to the deployment of U.S. troops first in Afghanistan, and then, wrongly or not, Iraq, plenty of questions are still being asked.

Many questions still center on how we got where we are, but most ask what comes next.

President Obama, with the Iraqi government, has laid out plans for our exit from that theater within months. Afghanistan, though, is another matter, requiring stability not just there but across the border in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and the Taliban roost.

Beyond military strategy, people are raising questions about the type of nation this war has made us. It is unfathomable to some that others are defending the despicable use of torture to extract information from captives. But we must not forget that war's nature includes the ability to elicit logic-defying responses.

America has spent considerable capital, including the deaths of many captured soldiers who were tortured, building its reputation as a nation that would never stoop to that level of depravity.

Should it now declare that expedience, not morality, is its guide?

Not so, said Obama in his national security speech Thursday. "From Europe to the Pacific, we've been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are," he said.

Obama also addressed another logic-defying assessment: that it would be too dangerous to transfer terrorist suspects being held at Guantanamo to U.S. prisons. "Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal, supermax prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists," he said.

The point - as we celebrate this Memorial Day - is that too many Americans have died in battle to protect the ideals of this country to cast them aside in our understandable pursuit of safety.

Obama said it well: "The terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are."