By Bill
Press
© 2003 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
When it comes to the brave men and women who lost their lives in Iraq,
President Bush has adopted a strange policy: What you don't see, doesn't
exist.
Under the newly promulgated Bush edict, for the first time in modern
warfare, TV crews are prohibited from filming flag-draped coffins of
American casualties coming home from Iraq. No cameras at their transfer
point, Ramstein Air Base in Germany. None at their first stop in the
United States, Delaware's Dover Air Force Base.
The ban on cameras, the White House piously insists, is enforced out of
respect for the victims' families. Those families who lost a son or
daughter in Iraq have already suffered enough, says press secretary Scott
McClellan. They shouldn't have to suffer the insensitivity of seeing their
soldier's coffin on national television.
How sweet – and how phony. There's only one reason President Bush
doesn't want videos of dead soldiers coming back from Iraq: To hide the
truth from the American people. As of this writing, 400 American troops
have sacrificed their lives in the Iraq war – 261 since the president
declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1. Forty, so far, have been killed
this month alone.
As long as we don't see their coffins, the president apparently
believes, maybe we'll forget about them. He's wrong. We won't forget their
sacrifice. We won't forget their bravery under fire. And we won't forget
how many young Americans never came home from a war that, to this day,
President Bush is still trying to find a reason for – just like he's still
trying to find weapons of mass destruction, yellow-cake uranium,
long-range missiles, bomb-carrying drones, Osama bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein.
The White House has it backward. The purpose of broadcasting videotape
of flag-draped coffins coming home to the United States is not to show
disrespect for our slain soldiers. It's to honor them. The same way we
welcomed home, and honored, those who gave their lives in Vietnam, Desert
Storm or Afghanistan. No one tried to hide those coffins.
Nor was there any media blackout at Ground Zero. Who can ever forget
that emotional scene, every time a fallen first responder was found
beneath the rubble? A whistle blew. All activity ceased. Workers lined up
and saluted as uniformed police or firemen carried the flag-draped body of
their comrade through the debris to a waiting ambulance.
Last month, cable networks broadcast an equally moving ceremony when
the body of a firefighter killed in the San Diego brush fire was put
aboard a plane for burial in Northern California.
What was true for Desert Storm, Ground Zero and the California brush
fires is true for the war in Iraq. Then, as now, seeing the homecoming
coffins of those killed in action is a solemn reminder for all of us to
give thanks to those in uniform, mourn our losses and pray for the victims
and their families.
President Bush doesn't want pictures of flag-draped coffins on
television for the same reason he has yet to attend the funeral of one
American soldier killed in Iraq. He doesn't want to be seen standing next
to a coffin. It might remind people of what's really going on in Iraq:
American troops dying every day, because there's no postwar strategy, not
enough troops and no plan for getting out.
Sure, the president expressed sympathy for the families of those 16
Americans killed when their Chinook helicopter was shot down. He did so at
a fund-raiser in Alabama. He also mourned the loss of six Americans killed
in the Blackhawk helicopter crash. At still another fund-raiser, in
Tennessee. As Don Imus observed on Nov. 10: "You got him running around
the country raising $200 million, while these kids are dying."
Isn't it sad that a president who makes time for nonstop fund-raisers
on his calendar can't make time for one funeral? Not even for Specialist
Darryl Dent, a 21-year-old National Guard officer from Washington whose
funeral was held at a Baptist church just three miles from the White
House. As columnist Maureen Dowd suggested, maybe the answer is "to
coordinate his schedule so he can go to cities where there are both
funerals and fund-raisers."
Or better yet, maybe President Bush should just get off the money
train. We are a nation of war. We need a commander in chief, not a
fund-raiser in chief.
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