Oldie, but a goodie

Editorial Observer: Accounting for the Invisible Casualties of War
>Shouldn’t Be a Matter of Politics
>
>November 14, 2003
> By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
>
>
>
>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.
>
>Letters from American soldiers who have died in Iraq,
>published on the Op-Ed page on Tuesday, suggest that Mr.
>Rumsfeld's accounting may be highly selective. Shortly
>before he died on June 17, Pvt. Robert Frantz wrote this to
>his mother: "We've had random gunfire within a 100-meter
>radius all night, every night, since I have been here. It
>kinda scares you the first couple nights, but you tend to
>get used to it."
>
>The idea of a slow, painful and bloody holding action in
>which gunfire is a nightly occurrence contrasts sharply,
>
>perhaps too sharply for comfort, with the display of
>overwhelming force, low casualties and lightning-swift
>conclusions that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld put on in the
>spring. The administration undoubtedly feels that showing
>coffins on television or having the president attend
>funerals would undermine public support for the war. (The
>ban on covering the arrival of coffins at Dover was in
>effect during the popular Afghanistan war, but was not
>enforced.) That seems like more of an acknowledgment of how
>fragile that support is than any poll yet taken.
>
>The Bush administration hates comparisons between Iraq and
>Vietnam, and many are a stretch. But there is a lesson that
>this president seems not to have learned from Vietnam. You
>cannot hide casualties. Indeed, trying to do so probably
>does more to undermine public confidence than any display
>of a flag-draped coffin. And there is at least one direct
>parallel. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of the
>
>Vietnam War, the Pentagon took to shipping bodies into the
>United States in the dead of night to avoid news coverage.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14FRI4.html?ex=1069834045&ei=1&en=660f
>5cd6223c62e2