Feb 27 2009
Pentagon to End Prohibition on Media Coverage of Returning War Dead
According to the Los Angeles Times, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Thursday that the Pentagon will lift its long-standing media ban on photos showing the remains of dead American service members returning home from war.
The ban on these images was first put in place by the administration of President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War. The administration of Bush’s son, George II, drew criticism from some quarters for its strict enforcement of this policy. When he was president, the younger Bush made damn sure no one was going to see the coffins of dead soldiers killed in the line of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The remains of all American servicemen and servicewomen are flown to Dover Air Force Base in the state of Delaware.
The Los Angeles Times reports “the new policy will leave it up to the families of slain service members to decide whether to allow the media to photograph the arrival of the remains in Dover.”
“My conclusion was, we should not presume to make the decision for the families. We should actually let them make it,” Gates said.
The issue of whether the media should have access to the remains of fallen service members has been a polarizing one for the military and veterans and family groups.
According to Joyce Raezer, the executive director of the National Military Family, “some favored keeping the ban, and others wanted to give families the option of allowing the media in.”
“We are hoping whatever comes out of this new policy accommodates a variety of wishes,” she said.
Well it is about time that ban was lifted. This animal does not find anything wrong with allowing the public to see the personal costs of the wars their government engages in, although the families of dead service members should be the ones who decide whether they want the press to show the remains of their loved ones. I hope the Pentagon and the Obama administration do not decide to revert back to the old policy if the casualties in the Afghan war start piling up. To try to ignore the toll that our wars take on those we send to fight them is tantamount to sticking ones head in the sand. It is also dishonorable.
I think the issue is not so much the number of casualties “piling up”, but the public’s perception of just how well/badly the war is going and whether those live are being well spent. If folks are dying in vain, or the public perceives them to be, then the Administration has a problem. If the public sees the war as a necessary thing, then they will not mind so much.
Bush had the problem because the war in Iraq wasn’t seen as the “right” war. It was seen as, essentially, a waste of our soldiers’ lives.
If Afghanistan ever gets to that same point, then Obama will have the same problem. He will then have some choices to make: either find a way to reduce the casualties, get out of the war, or make the war more relevant to the public, whereupon the numbers won’t be a problem anymore.
“If Afghanistan ever gets to that same point, then Obama will have the same problem.”
If in four years the situation in Afghanistan has worsened and we still haven’t caught or killed Bin Laden, methinks Obama will have a serious problem. Like Johnson before him, he won’t be able to pull out of an increasingly unpopular and destructive war without inviting “cut-and-run” accusations by Republicans, but further escalation could prove even worse. Yet, to keep doing the same will also hurt, as we saw in Iraq.