To Honor The Dead (student political paper column)

[BloodyWilliam]

To Honor The Dead
By *. **** *********


As cynical as I am, even a token gesture from the
administration would be comforting at this point. Hundreds of our
troops are dead, thousands are injured, and I have yet to see
President Bush shed a single tear. Rather than honoring those who
died for this country (whether the action was just or not), the
administration is trying to bury them in unmarked grades, denying
them even the dignity of recognition as their bodies return to the
land in which they were born.

Regardless of whether the action in Iraq was justified, those
who gave their lives for it died for the right reasons. They died
not for the president, not for the flag, not even for the Iraqi
people. They died for the nation they pledged loyalty to, that they
swore to protect and serve at any cost. They were told “America
needs you there” and so they went gladly, in the service of this
nation.

To say that they should be honored for their work, for their
pain, for their sacrifice is truly an understatement.
November 2 a helicopter was shot down in Iraq, killing
sixteen soldiers. Like every other death in Iraq before and after,
this was met with silence by the president. He delegated the
expression of mourning, of regret, of anger at the deaths of our
troops to his subordinates. Instead, Bush reacted to the deaths of
our people by doing business as usual: he was campaigning,
vacationing, not doing the work he swore to the people of America
that he would do.

To date, the president has not gone to a single funeral for
troops killed in action, and has remained silent while countless
families of fallen soldiers mourn. Arlington National Cemetery is
barely minutes away, and with a single phone call or a single stroke
of a pen he could make the families of our lost soldiers, as well as
the rest of the country, feel that much better. It would be a
gesture that is sorely missed by those grieving for their lost sons
and daughters. The president’s time may be important, but it can not
be more important than the hearts and lives of those who served our
country and their families.

To rub salt into the wound, the administration and the
Pentagon has banned press coverage of the returning dead. No
photographs may be taken of the flag-draped caskets as they return to
U.S. soil, the administration decided. This has been done so the
public doesn’t start to doubt the Iraq war. Continuing to justify
the war in the eyes of the public shouldn’t prevent those who died in
the service of our country from being honored. In doing so, we are
allowing the service those men and women performed to be forgotten.

This is not political. It is simple decency, and the
responsibility of the President of the United States to honor and
respect those who died under his command.