Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Let's be honest here. You can have an honest disagreement about whether photographers should be allowed to photograph coffins, or how and when the President makes a public appearance with a family, as John McCain does in this article. The fact remains, however, that most of the people crowing and nit-picking over whether the President is sufficiently expressing grief or not are doing so for their own purposes. They see it as a tool to oppose a war and a policy they don't support, and the bodies of the boys and the grief of their families are just one more tool in that effort. It's a propaganda effort of their own. It's activist journalism.
The President is expected to lead. His explanations for his choices in this matter are reasonable, although one could argue over details, he has a job to do, and not making the American public so damn depressed they won't go on is one of them. I doubt FDR spent a lot of his time at funerals.
I'm reading Ernie Pyle's Brave Men, a collection of his writings from the front in WW2. He reports on the deaths and the hardships, certainly, but it is always, always framed within the idea of "noble sacrifice." Is that what the authors of this article, Anne E. Kornblut and Wayne Washington, have as their frame of reference, or do they wish to make their own use of our dead kids and the families' grief? I think we know the answer. So who comes out looking bad after reading an article like this, The President, or The Press?
Boston.com / News / Nation / Bush meets with families of war dead
But as in the past, Bush's comments were largely overshadowed by the gruesome reality on the ground -- this time, a horrific attack on two US soldiers who were shot, then their bodies dragged from their vehicle and beaten in the northern city of Mosul over the weekend. About the attack, which had flooded the news coverage for more than a day, Bush said nothing.
"We face enemies that measure their progress by the chaos they inflict," he simply said.
But now Bush himself is coming under increasing pressure to acknowledge the losses in Iraq by attending military funerals or, at least, allowing cameras to record the homecomings of flag-draped coffins rolling off the cargo planes at Dover Air Force Base. Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, told the Globe he is interested in pushing the administration to allow photographers to witness the arrival of caskets at Dover...
Update: Interesting post and discussion at Donald Sensing's.
