Why Hide The Fallen?
I was dismayed last week when a Defense Department contractor was fired for publishing pictures of coffins containing slain soldiers on their way home from Iraq. An undersecretary of Defense argued "we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified." While I can understand the DoD's will to secrecy and the policy it generated, it ultimately does very little good. Sometimes risking undignified treatment is the price of freedom.
In the current climate of half-truths and obscurity that President Bush and his advisors seem to prefer, even long-standing policies like this get caught up in the larger tide of similar gestures seemingly designed to deny the American people information that they might actually want to have. I'm not blaming Bush-- this isn't his policy-- but it just doesn't help him, either.
I am personally glad the photos were published. War is an abstraction to us, and images of the fallen make it decidedly less so. Like the images of September 11 (or March 11), and like the hideous photos brought home from prior wars (a Spanish partisan falling, his carbine flung away from his body, his head exploding, the screaming Vietnamese girl, burned by Napalm), they translate the current libervasion of Iraq into human terms far removed from the best-case calculus of the President's advisors or the redfaced screaming of the BusHitler crowd.
Wars look ever more like video games, and ever since WWII, the USA has been able to absorb the cost of committment without undue strain. This changes how we see things. During WWI, the USA itself felt the impact of the fighting abroad. Rationing, huge casualty lists, and the sinking of civilian ships brought the fact of war into everyone's consciousness. Ditto WWII, where the stakes for the USA were higher still. But now that war is less of an effort for the country, and conducted on a smaller scale far away (and for increasingly complicated reasons and goals), it becomes more of an abstraction. It's all well and good for me to sit here and play armchair pundit, commenting on that abstraction. But I can easily forget that the men and women in Iraq who joined the military are giving their lives in defense of liberty. I might not see the endgame, and I might not agree that Iraq was the very best place to fight. But neither of those considerations takes away from the gratitude I feel toward the people of the US military.
Images like were published in The Seattle Times (and everywhere else) overcome that abstraction in favor of fact. It is good to be reminded that the military treats its fallen with deep respect and overwhelming honor, and it does the right thing by the dead for the country to see and understand not only the sacrifice they have made, but the great dignity with which our country recognizes that fact. Hiding these images, making a policy of hiding these images, is the wrong thing to do. Whether you are for or against the war, these pictures do a great service.
Below the fold.
[wik] According to the Washington Post, the ban on images like these dates from the Clinton administration, but was specifically enforced at the start of the Iraq War. "In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains." (Dana Millbank, WaPo, 10/21/2003). Draw your own conclusions about the Bush Administration's committment to secrecy.
[alsø wik] Kathy Kinsley observes that the Pentagon may be revising the policy. KK has some thoughts.
The Memory Hole has hundreds more.
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J,
J,
It was my understanding that she was fired precisely because she violated the ban on publishing such photos. She knew the rules, but went straight to the Seattle Times with them. She can only have done that in an attempt to embarass somebody somewhere, since she knew better and can't believably claim ignorance.
As for the ban itself, I might guess it has more to do with what our enemies do with such photos than anything else. It's images of honor guards at Arlington burying the dead that will be in your son or daughter's history textbook, not pics or mention of jihadis firing from ambulances and mosques.
GL, sure she was fired
GL, sure she was fired because of the ban, and I don't really have a problem with that action per se.
But I do think you are reading wrong WHY she published them. The pics are incredibly moving-- is it not possible that she was moved to break the law?
Why should we care what our enemies do with the photos, especially these photos?
Johno writes:
Johno writes:
Why should we care what our enemies do with the photos, especially these photos?
And I'm thinking, 'What enemies? Whose enemies?' Enemies of the Neo-cos and GOP who need to hold on to whatever shred of broadbased support they have in the US? Enemies of the administration? This is all about Bushies doing damage control.
ps I went to the rally in DC yesterday. Very impressive. I love you guys, but there's not enough estrogen on your site, no matter how much I love them Giant Robots.
Mapgirl, we've discussed
Mapgirl, we've discussed getting some she-males on board here, but Buckethead keeps nixing the notion. Something about "family values."
Mapgirl underestimates the
Mapgirl underestimates the propaganda value associated with these photos and the impact they have on servicepeople committed to the fight and a public terrifically ignorant of things martial.
By "enemies", I mean enemies: Al Qaeda, Al-Sadr, the Taliban, and hippies, all of whom see these pics, and others like them, as evidence of defeat and massive loss. The American Left can only be gleeful with pics like these, because every dead American is good news politically for them. Why not just let the services conduct their services with honor and quiet dignity instead of making political hay with them?
And save the argument about the public's right to know. If the public gave a fuck, it would spend more time at veterans' graves in their local cemeteries, or at Arlington, and less time puling about photos.
Ah, OK I get it now. The
Ah, OK I get it now. The woman who took the photo sent it to a friend CONUS, who passed it on to the Seattle Times. The Times then contacted her, and got her permission to run it.
Both photog and pal sued Haliburton 4 years ago, alleging sexual harrassment. Cheney was named in the suit, presumably in his capacity as a honcho.
Newsmax adds this: "Ms. Katz insisted last night that neither she nor Silicio had any political motivation, telling MSNBC that they thought publishing the photo was a good way of honoring the fallen troops.
"She admitted, however, that she has retained an agent to help sell the casket photo, with the proceeds to be divided between charity and a fund to help pay Silicio's debts in the wake of her firing."
There couldn't POSSIBLY be anything amiss about this episode, what with a sexual harassment suit, hiring an agent, and selling the photos she took and improperly diseminated.
I'm sure it's all for the children. I mean, the families...yes, it's all for the families.
GL, I understand your
GL, I understand your objections, and I must confess that I didn't know about her "history" with Halliburton etc.
Regardless of what ulterior motives taint her actions (and I cannot believe that her decision was ENTIRELY selfishly motivated), I am still glad to have seen the photos. Glad is the wrong word in every possible sense. But you get my drift.
First of all, for the record,
First of all, for the record, I am NOT against she-males, necessarily. I've seen some of their work ("Tritanic"; "His AND Hers" [vols II-XIV]; "Captain Kinkelli's Ham-Goes-In"; "Hershey HeShes")and I'm fully supportive of their art.
Second, I realized that Johno's bitch-O-meter is a much more finely calibrated instrument than my own. My earlier responses to he and loyal reader mapgirl actually went right past snarky, mostly through bitchy, and were just this side of caustic before sliding to a self-righteous halt.
Today I was pretty bitchy.
For the sake of continued civil discourse, and not harshing anyone's mellow, I will refrain in future from any blog-age in the minutes immediately after attending 90 minute meetings that in any sane universe would take 30. And after I've stopped grinding my teeth because of it. And after I've been fed, NEVER before.
GL - are you sure that wasn't
GL - are you sure that wasn't PMS? ;-)
Maps, Yes, and PMS too.
Maps,
Yes, and PMS too.
Mapgirl, you know I'm all
Mapgirl, you know I'm all about keeping the womens barefoot and pregnant. A blog is no place for a woman.
Thank god my wife doesn't read comments on old posts...