Jackson Free Press

At the Neshoba County Fair this year, I had gotten up close to the lectern so I could take a close-up picture of Gov. Haley Barbour's face during his annual political address. He said my family name at the exact moment I snapped his picture.

My cousin, he said, has "made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Their families must always have our thanks, our thoughts and our prayers."

I listened, thinking about my cousin's close and loving family and the pain they are going through since he was killed in Iraq. I do not want to politicize his death, and I won't use his name in a column against the war. That is not up to me to do. The truth is, my cousin supported the war—thank God. You certainly shouldn't die for a cause you do not believe in. He was gung ho, he was patriotic, and he believed to his core that he was doing a great thing by serving his country in Iraq. And he was.

Every soldier who risks his or her life for this country is a hero. I could never understand why an American could hold a bad war against the fellow Americans who had the trust in their hearts to believe they were fighting it for the right reason.

Families who give up loved ones in war deserve our honor, regardless of what we think of the war. And they deserve our help when they come home. They also deserve to know that the politicians who are sending them to possibly be killed will both honor them and take care of their families if they do not return. And they deserve not to be used in an empty, political fashion.

The morning after Barbour used my family name, I saw an Associated Press story that reported that Barbour has not attended any funerals of the 37 Mississippi soldiers killed so far in Iraq—26 of them since he took office. He has gone to five visitations, but not a single funeral. Huh.

"Attending services for our fallen soldiers is a private and personal expression of our sympathy and support, but their families deserve for us to show our respect by attending visitation," Barbour told the Associated Press.

My experience has been the opposite: It seems that the funeral is more the public show of sorrow; the visitation, or wake, is the more "private and personal expression" of grief. And I can't quite imagine a better show of support, of shared grief, than a public official showing up at a funeral, unless the family has requested that it be private.

I can see having reasons for not attending funerals. I did not attend my cousin's funeral because I had spoken out publicly against the war when it started and did not want that to draw attention away from the honoring of a 20-year-old hero.

Yet, I feel strongly that a politician who votes to send Americans to war, or who supports that war in a very public way, as Barbour does, should have the responsibility to then publicly show their remorse for the families' loss. They need to face the families in their most difficult moments of grief, to stand with them as the casket is lowered, stand there as the first dirt is shoveled.

But that's not how this war is working. For most Americans—Bush's handling of the war has dropped to 38 percent approval, the lowest yet—this war has been bungled. The difficult truth is that the war was based on faulty premises; it did not go fast and easy as the administration promised (and the neo-cons' "shock and awe" assurance proved as absurd as it sounded); it did not end when Bush donned the flight suit on the aircraft carrier; 1,838 American soldiers have died (not to mention other coalition soldiers and countless Iraqis); Iraq is now a haven for terrorists thanks to this war;and the people who pushed the war are not going to our soldiers' funerals.

Why not? Because George W. Bush, and Sen. Trent Lott and Gov. Haley Barbour do not want the media to take their pictures with the caskets of dead American soldiers. We know this. And it's a tragic, horrifying, twisted fact. I can't imagine anything quite as cowardly as sending men and women to a war, but not being willing to attend their funerals—and face the families and the cameras—of those who are killed there. Or of trying to forbid media from showing their caskets, as this administration tried to do, fortunately to no avail.

True leaders take responsibility for their actions, even when the actions were ill conceived. And part of the responsibility in this war, here and now, is to admit the mistakes that were made, even the lies that were told to get the public to support the war: the fear of WMD, the yellowcake that wasn't, the campaign to discredit and ruin people who tried to tell the truth—like Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.

We are living through an era when the truth isn't really what matters; ideological marketing is everything. Our societal morality has really taken a hit when we can somehow justify strategies used by Karl Rove and others in the administration to cover up the lies of the past. No matter what one's political beliefs are, someone needs to pay for outing a CIA agent. That's just common sense and decency and, well, patriotism. But not to the current administration, which seems willing to do anything to cover its trail of deception.

That trail is continuing to lead to the tragic deaths of our soldiers. There is no end in sight. And perhaps even more horrible—morality wise—is that all Americans are being asked to understand that we must "stay the course" in a poorly planned and justified war that is causing so many families to lose loved ones. And we're accused of not "supporting the soldiers" if we criticize a bad war they shouldn't be dying in. Hogwash.

More and more family members are speaking out. Last weekend a group called Gold Star Families for Peace marched on George W. Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, demanding an explanation of the "noble cause" he calls the war. They wanted to ask him "why Jenna and Barbara are not in harm's way, if the cause is so noble," but Bush would not face them.

They have a point. How "noble" is it to sacrifice our families in a war with no end in site, no solid strategy behind it, and such a poor reason for the war that the government had to lie to us about our own security to get us behind it? Politicians should, indeed, only send our loved ones to a war if they are willing to send their own children.

Previous Commentsshow

I think you handled this article extremely well. Especially since I know (or feel like I have a pretty accurate understanding based on your writings) you feelings about the war. I think you handled this with literary integrity. You stayed true to your beliefs, without degrading those (namely your family members, whom you honored) who have a different view. I am very conservative in my views, but I am certainly NOT a Republican. I have a strong disdain for both of our major political parties. I have been a Bush supporter for a long time, but my support has been gradually waning as the months roll by. I had high hopes with him, but he has turned out to be a politician. I started losing respect for him with the flight suit stunt. I conitnue to lose respect for him with the same tired old line about our noble cause, hunting down our enemies, staying the course, etc, etc, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. I agreed with the war initially, and still think we have accomplished great good, but think the handling of the details has been short sighted and flawed. The blame is on the administration, not the soldiers. If the election were tomorrow I would not vote for John Kerry, but I wouldn't vote for Bush either. The only thing I don't agree with is the quote from those folks who asked why his daughters are not in the war. While I DO NOT agree with an administration recklessly sending soldiers into harms way (i.e. without a just cause), it is a voluntary military. No one is in the military by force. Every soldier made the choice, by their own volition, to enlist in the military. When you join the military you know full well that you may be called upon to go into battle and your life be put in danger. If you are not willing to take that risk you should not join the military. Again, that said, our leaders should not abuse the willingness of our volunteers by sending them to battle needlessly. Jen and Barb are not their because they choose not to join the military. They are not willing to take that risk. And there is nothing wrong with that. There are a lot more of us in America who are not willing to take that risk than there are those who will. The same logic that asks why his daughters are not in the war should also ask the Socialist Hollywood elites why they are spending untold millions on 3rd, 4th and 5th homes as well as 5-10 luxury cars, instead of donating that to charity. The reason is simple: it is a free country and you can do what you want with your money or your life. You can keep it all or give it away as a sacrifice to others.

brandon/jade

Aug 12 2005

Thanks, B.J. I just saw your comments, and I do appreciate them. As for the "daughters" part, see the other thread where people are already discussing this. Otherwise, Clarion-Ledger editor Ronnie Agnew tackles this same topic today in his column. Good to see him do it, but it's an interesting about-face from just months ago when the Ledge endorsed Bush, saying he should get the chance to finish what he started. Money quotes from this column: The president is losing support and, it seems, a large measure of control. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggests that only 38 percent support the way the president has handled the war, a statistic that continues to drop as the U.S. casualty rate goes up. The dead now number more than 1,800. August has been the deadliest month of the war, with more than 40 soldiers killed. Mississippi has witnessed the war's brutality. Thirty-seven soldiers from the state have been killed, their families left behind to carry on. We're a small, rural state, but we rank fifth proportionally in the number of soldiers killed. They were fathers trying to make an extra buck on the weekend through National Guard duty. They were baby-faced kids who joined the military to help finance a college education. They were young men barely out of high school who wanted to experience the travel and adventure of military life. ... The exposure given to this one-woman crusade also raises an interesting question that is one of the core issues of this debate: Is it possible to oppose the war while showing support for the soldiers? Is that really a question? The only people I've heard use it are ones supporting a bad war (like Vietnam). Think about it.

DonnaLadd

Aug 14 2005