Pacific Views

Honoring the Sacrifice

George W Bush says a lot about how noble the soldiers are -- both those who have died and also those who have been disabled in Iraq. He says that they are to be commended for their sacrifice. Yet, he has never found a reason or need to attend a funeral nor to publicly acknowledge those who have been wounded in this war.

Today the NY Times has an editorial that I think expresses the problem with Bush and his unwillingness to acknowledge the real sacrifice of these men and women he "commands". The men and women who volunteered for our military deserve to be acknowledged. And their deaths should be more than just statistics. This is why I believe that PatK and Elvis56, both adamantly opposed to the war, do more to honor and respect the troops than GWB's entire administration.

Here is an excerpt from the NYTimes editorial:

One of the most enduring memories from the funeral of my friend Michael Kelly, who was killed covering the war in Iraq for Atlantic Monthly, was standing by his open grave in a cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., watching an Army officer in dress uniform make his way through the cold, persistent drizzle and up the small hill to Michael's wife and boys. He spoke to the family quietly and then got down on one knee on the wet artificial turf that had been placed there in a vain attempt to shield the mourners from the earth. He gave the boys a flag and a medal.

Michael Kelly was not one of their own. He was brash and brave, but distinctly unmilitary. Yet the Army took pains to make this simple gesture that drove home the way the military honors death: it endows that inescapable but inescapably tragic part of their lives with a sense of moment, of ceremony and dignity, and most of all it faces death squarely and honestly.

This is a central part of the warrior's culture, but it is all too often missing from the way President Bush is running the Iraq war. As the toll nears 400, the casualties remain largely invisible. Apart from a flurry of ceremonies on Veterans Day, this White House has done everything it can to keep Mr. Bush away from the families of the dead, at least when there might be a camera around.

The wounded, thousands of them, are even more carefully screened from the public. And the Pentagon has continued its ban on media coverage of the return of flag-draped coffins to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, denying the dead soldiers and their loved ones even that simple public recognition of sacrifice. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained rather lamely that the ban had been in place since 1991 — when another President Bush wanted to avoid the juxtaposition of his face and words with pictures of soldiers' coffins.

Some Republicans say it would take up too much of the president's time to attend military funerals or meet the coffins returning from Iraq. "They're coming back continually," the conservative commentator Bay Buchanan said on CNN on Tuesday. "The president cannot be flying up there every single week."

But someone of rank from the White House could and should be at each and every military funeral. Ideally, Mr. Bush would shake the hand of someone who loved every person who dies in uniform — a small demand on his time in a war in which the casualties are still relatively small. And he has more than enough advisers, cabinet secretaries and other officials so attending funerals should not be such an inconvenience.

The White House talks about preserving the privacy and dignity of the families of the war dead. But if this was really about the families, the president or Vice President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would be handing flags to widows and mothers in the time-honored way. And if protecting the privacy of Americans who are suffering was such a priority, the White House wouldn't call in the cameras to watch Mr. Bush embracing victims of every hurricane, earthquake or suburban California wildfire.

Along with the coverage of these casualties, the coverage of combat in Iraq has virtually ceased. The "embedded" correspondents who reported on the stunningly swift march to Baghdad during the invasion are gone. The Pentagon has ended the program. The ever-upbeat Mr. Rumsfeld likes to say that the attacks on American soldiers are brief and relatively few in number, compared with the number of men in arms in the field in Iraq. But without real news coverage, it's hard to know the truth.

(Do read the rest. The troops are acting for us. We owe them more than they have gotten for their sacrifice.)

Posted by Mary at November 14, 2003 03:37 AM | TrackBack