I know this issue has been rehashed repeatedly, online and off, but I was nevertheless glad to see Senate Dems (led by New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg) force the military coffin issue onto the Senate floor yesterday. It didn’t work out — the GOP majority stood with the Bush administration — but it’s a reminder about an issue with symbolic significance.
The Bush administration’s policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures.
[…]
Mr. Lautenberg’s amendment would have instructed the Department of Defense to work out a new protocol permitting the news media to cover the arrival of the war dead in a manner that protected families’ privacy.
I’ve never really understood the administration’s argument, at least the one put forward publicly.
The most common concern is that for the privacy of the fallen and their families and, if true, it should pretty much trump everything else. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who voted with the Dems on this, helped explain why.
“These caskets that arrive at Dover are not named; we just see them,” said Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam. He added, “I think we ought to know the casualties of war.”
Others argue that media publication of flag-draped coffins is somehow disrespectful. But, this too is unpersuasive. Bush has already used one flag-draped coffin in a campaign TV commercial and, as my friend Poppy noted, Reagan’s flag-draped coffin was laid in-state for days as thousands of visitors paid their respects. The administration didn’t seem concerned about dishonoring the former president by having photos of the event in the news.
It’s awful to assume the worst, but the timing of the administration’s decision on this policy clearly suggests that Bush wants to keep these images from public view for political purposes.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.
To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.
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.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 — the last days of the Clinton administration — but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military’s largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others “may not have been familiar with the policy,” the spokeswoman said. This year, “we’ve really tried to enforce it.”
But the enforcement seems to have everything to do with public relations, instead of honoring these soldiers’ sacrifice.
Of course we want to treat the fallen with the reverence they deserve, but, if anything, that suggests broader dissemination of these pictures.
As far as I can tell, the care and respect the military shows towards these coffins is truly moving. By insisting that these pictures be hidden, Bush acts as if his poll numbers are what need protecting, not the privacy of the troops’ families.
“A majority of the Senate are now working on behalf of the president to conceal from the American people the true costs of this war,” Senator Lautenberg said in a statement after the vote. He said his amendment “would bring an end to the shroud of secrecy cloaking the hard, difficult truth about war and the sacrifices of our soldiers.”