In times like these, Memorial Day shouldn't be treated like most national holidays. It deserves better.

Back in 1868, when Union Gen. John Logan called for the creation of a holiday (originally called Decoration Day) to honor those who fought in defense of this nation during the Civil War, he urged Americans to treat it with special reverence. He ordered members of his Grand Army of the Republic, then the nation's largest veterans organization, to put flowers and flags on the graves of the Union Army's dead.

"Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners," Logan said. "Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic."

But the passage of time has done just that.

For far too many people, Memorial Day is defined more by backyard cookouts and department store sales than by the memory of the servicemen and women who died defending this country. In this way, the day is much like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas — a national holiday diminished by commercialism and indifference.

With the body count of U.S. troops mounting in Iraq, this Memorial Day is an especially important time to embrace Logan's call to cherish "tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who have made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes."

This is no appeal to partisanship. The men and women of our armed forces are citizen soldiers, not members of sectarian brigades. They have sworn an oath to the nation, not to the Republican or Democratic parties. And they do their duty regardless of which political party controls the White House.

So it shouldn't matter whether you support or oppose U.S. involvement in Iraq. On this Memorial Day, we all ought to honor the more than 3,400 Americans who have died in this conflict.

As Abraham Lincoln said of the Civil War dead in his Gettysburg Address, they gave their "last full measure of devotion" to this nation. So it isn't asking too much for us to take a day to remember them.

Ironically, while many of the politicians debating the U.S. role in Iraq are well-known to us, the names of most of our war dead are not. For most Americans, they're just numbers in a growing list of men and women who didn't return home alive.

We owe it to their families and friends to pause on Memorial Day — not for a grilled hamburger or a department store sale — but to praise the courage and sacrifices of those who have died in Iraq. The debate that now rages between the Republican White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress over U.S. involvement in Iraq shouldn't blind us to this responsibility.

My father is a World War II veteran buried in a military cemetery. So is my oldest brother, a Vietnam-era veteran. They didn't die in combat but, like those who did, they accepted this nation's call to bear arms in its defense.

This Memorial Day, I'm going to put flowers on their graves out of love for them and reverence for the men and women sent to fight in Iraq, a war most Americans now view as a wasted effort.

If ever there was a time for the people of this country to find common ground, to stand together and put aside our differences, this Memorial Day is it.