At Arlington, grim reminders of what matters (What Tuesday is About)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/468499p-394170c.html

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There will be soldiers on caisson duty later, not up here at Fort Myer but starting down near the collecting area at Patton Circle. These are the ones who will begin the walk toward section 60 of Arlington National, where most of the dead from the Iraq war are buried. Two more last week, making it 271 in all from Iraq in this part of the cemetery.

Capt. Mark Paine of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., a West Point man, winner of the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, is the soldier from Iraq who will be buried on this day. It was not his first tour in Iraq. He ends up in section 60, off Eisenhower Way, on a Friday afternoon in November.

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The ones who started this war do not want you to see the ceremonies that begin at Patton Circle or near McLellan Gate and make their way to section 60. They do not want you to hear the mournful sound of the bugle playing taps or the sound of the three-volley salute fired for Army men like Capt. Mark Paine. They would rather have Tuesday's elections be a referendum on anything except another young soldier ending up here.

There is nothing at section 60 for the people who started this war, who still try to tell the country that it is somehow essential to the safety of this country. The President rolls up his sleeves, like a tough, regular guy, and says, "If we don't stop them there, they will follow us here," as if somehow his war in Iraq is essential to the future safety of Cedar Rapids. And then he is never near a coffin at Arlington National if he can help it, and he acts if a solemn outdoor cathedral like this, with a couple more military burials every week, does not exist.

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Only this election is not about Kerry. It is not about a peep show like Rep. Mark Foley's, or an Evangelical minister with a hunky boyfriend, or the cheap lie, peddled door to door by this administration, that opposition to Bush's war makes you some kind of weak, lousy traitor. No. Tuesday will be about this war, about coffins we aren't supposed to see at Arlington, about the back rows of section 60, about Capt. Mark Paine of the U.S. Army, who was proud to serve his country, who was supposed to come home from Iraq for good so he could be home for Christmas.