Andrew Bacevich’s“Mourning in America’’ (Opinion, March 7) caught my attention. It was a good sermon. I give Bacevich an A for construction, a B for coherence, but a D- for the conclusion. He began with a powerful James Baldwin quote to hook the audience, and concluded with a moving illustration using Navy SEAL Ryan Owens’s death. Preachers, professors, politicians — this is what we do in order to manipulate or motivate, or a little of both, sometimes within the same message.

However, Bacevich employed what he seemed to condemn. He used “spurious emotion’’ to manipulate the reader. Stirring up anger is skillful manipulation, aimed to arouse those already angry to greater indignation. Veiled by righteous indignation is the suggestion that Owens died in vain. My son is serving in the Middle East. A terrorist may have a Muslim woman or child in his sights. If that man is killed during one of my son’s missions, or even if the man flees due to the mere presence of a man like my son, then I call that “mission accomplished.’’

Yes, my son could be killed. I will be devastated, just as William Owens is.

I know my son’s heart. He believes in the duty to protect that woman or child.

The Rev. David W. Sidoruk

Foxborough

The writer is a hospice chaplain.