Shining Starr

From The NYTimes reports:

Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, rejected a $24,000 bonus to re-enlist. Corporal Starr believed strongly in the war, his father said, but was tired of the harsh life and nearness of death in Iraq. So he enrolled at Everett Community College near his parents' home in Snohomish, Wash., planning to study psychology after his enlistment ended in August.

But he died in a firefight in Ramadi on April 30 during his third tour in Iraq. He was 22.

Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

Michelle Malkin reports the part of the email that the Times left out:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark." [Italics added]

From the same Times report:

More than 420 service members, the majority of them marines and soldiers, have died while on repeat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The truths from the Gettysburg address come to mind.

What did they die for? Freedom. And few get to die for something that important.

Personal: Starr was my mother's maiden name. It's my middle name. One of my Starr uncles died in the South Pacific in WWII when the plane he was in crashed. His older brother Warren was captured at Corregidor and was in the Bataan Death March, and lived to tell about it. They are heroes to me. And so is Marine Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr. No greater love hath any man.