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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Playing games with war dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Throughout the entire Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism one thing in particular that Americans who opposed the war do drives me up the wall. An example was reported Wednesday from Santa Barbara, Calif. It’s a project allegedly intended to “honor” U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen killed in Iraq.
The project on an acre of Santa Barbara beach involves placing handmade wooden crosses in regimental columns to “honor” every service member killed in Iraq. The story is that “as the nation approaches the grim milestone of 3,000 war fatalities” organizers are running out of allotted sand. The project, the reporter notes, “started as more protest than commemoration” to capture the attention of the public and the media that appeared to pay too little attention to the war’s toll.
Periodically news organizations and groups opposed to the war employ similar devices — using the names, for example, or running the pictures of those killed — ostensibly to “honor” their sacrifice. When it’s done honestly and without a polititical agena — that is, when the gesture is not premised on the notion that Americans support this war or any other because they are ignorant to its costs in human life — it can in fact be a meaningful tribute. But almost all are akin to the Santa Barbara beachfront project.
Take another emotional issue involving the loss of human life: abortion. Would anybody imagine that a field of homemade crosses erected as a scorecard was anything more than a political statement of opposition? Of course not. And would any news organization run a daily reminder of abortions performed in, say, the 10 largest American cities? Of coure not. The political purpose would be too obvious.
If the use of a soldier’s name and likeness is to report news, that’s fair. If it is to advance a political agenda with which the fallen soldier may not have agreed, his sacrifice is not honored. Quite the contrary.
