Don't Deny Horrors of War :by Michael Takiff :LATimes

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-takiff11nov11,1,4665807.story?coll=la-headlines-oped-manual

COMMENTARY by Michael Takiff
Don't Deny Horrors of War
To honor soldiers' sacrifices, we must look at what we are asking them to do.

Today, brave young Americans are abroad once more, undertaking the responsibility, as Hutchins did in Vietnam, to risk life and limb in service to their countrymen. But the rest of us — we who benefit by the courage of our warriors — have failed in our own responsibilities of citizenship. Though we take pride in our democracy, we have shunned authentic knowledge of this war being waged in our names. Conspiring with our media and our government, we have been content to turn our eyes from the carnage that is at the heart of this war, as it is at the heart of any war. And so we have not kept faith with this new generation of combat veterans being created on foreign shores.


From the beginning of the Iraq war, our news media have not shown us the feet or legs; indeed, they have reacted with outrage when foreign news organizations have dared to disturb their audiences with war's unpalatable reality. During the "major combat" phase of the war, we were spoon-fed pounding music, gaudy graphics and cheerleading commentary.

The deception has only intensified since what many still call, less plausibly every day, the end of the war. In Baghdad, journalists are kept away from the morgue and from hospitals, while at Ramstein in Germany and at every military base in the U.S. they are forbidden from covering the arrival of soldiers' bodies. The government and the media tell us next to nothing about the wounded, and in reporting the numbers of the dead they often include only those killed "by hostile action," as though lethal accidents are not an inevitable result of war, and as though the victims of these accidents are not just as young and just as dead and the tears of their mothers not just as hot. And if our government keeps tabs on the number of Iraqis killed, it doesn't let on.

If we citizens of this democracy choose to wage war in sober knowledge of our decision's effects, so be it. But if a war depends for its support on the citizenry's ignorance — as the Pentagon and White House evidently believe this one does — that war does not merit support.

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