Quote Originally Posted by theGinsue View Post
Honest question for the last 2 posters: Would you still be posing this question if the body was that of a U.S. Servicemember who died in combat?

Does the situation around the persons death change the parameters enough to negate the question for those circumstances?
Absolutely the question stands and is asked just for that situation. Would a US service person's parent's really want more parents to lose their children as well for no other purpose than to retrieve a body?

And we do leave people behind, frequently. Living and dead, in all prior wars. "No man left behind" is marketing, not an actual standard. It's simply a social standard that places a lot of value on a "body", so much so that we seem to value a corpse more than life, so long as it the additional lsn't another one of our own children, completely acceptable if it's three of my neighbor's kids. "Closure" is that important. It's quite strange... Here we are, the oddball, saying isn't someone's living life more valuable than a dead corpse?