Yes, this was the normal practice during Vietnam, and we lost in Vietnam. Back in those days, there wasn't a 24 hour news cycle, or a completely rabid left wing media (at least not like today). And while Bush Sr's enactment of the ban was cast as vanity in the media, the fact is, the media at the time was doing the very thing I am talking about here — politicizing the return of America's war dead by showing the president in an inopportune split screen.
It's worth noting that Bush was a naval aviator who served this great country proudly during World War II, fighting along side fellow Americans. Yet, serving as President of this country, he was lambasted by media whom likely never served a day in the military for laughing at an arbitrary moment of the media's choosing. Americans don't join the military, and then make the ultimate sacrifice, in order to help make the point for the anti-war left. Americans join to help fight for freedom and to help America win the conflicts we face.
The military has wars to fight on behalf of America, and our enemies are not wasting their time hand-wringing over issues such as this. Rather, they are focused on how best to kill us, so as to have even more of those coffins pass through Dover. Our enemies are starting to see a new administration with little experience, that is cutting military funding, closing Gitmo, setting terrorists free, and now letting the left wing media politicize our war dead. Our enemies realize today that with every American soldier killed in action, they've not only won a battle but also gained a propaganda victory with the help of their (hopefully) unwitting accomplices in the American government and media.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baritone
"Firstly, it scares would be enlistees with the obvious message that "this can happen to you."
By all means, we wouldn't want the young whelps clamboring to join up for the cause to take a moment and think about what doing so could really mean, now would we? Any recruiter worth his or her salt downplays that possibility. Only after it's too late, only when the recruit starts being brow beaten in basic training is it first brought home to him or her that they may not make it out of this man's and woman's army alive.
Just yesterday I inspected a home of an Army widow. Her husband was just short of completing 20 years in service. He had served two 15 month tours in Iraq and another 12 months in Afghanistan. Upon his return a few months ago, he had put in his papers for retirement which would have been effective sometime this summer.
Nevertheless, he was redeployed with his unit to Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb 2 days after he arrived. His wife is on the verge of losing their home. She is trying to complete a short sale to avoid foreclosure. (Yes, she is one of those low life scumbags who got strapped with a sub-prime adjustable rate mortgage.) She has 3 kids, the eldest only 8 years old, the youngest a toddler. Glory, glory hallelujah! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition! Life is good, by god!
The old saw about aiding and abetting the enemy is crap. The notion that the MSM is radically liberal is also crap.
During Vietnam nobody wanted to wind up face down in a rice patty. Today, no one wants to be rendered pink mist by a roadside bomb. There is no glory in war. There is only pain and death. Pain and death! You can paint all the glorious patriotic pictures you want about war, but that's all bullshit. All it is is pain and death for those fighting. All it is for those at home is pain and loss. Loss for the fathers and mothers, the brothers and sisters, the lovers, wives, husbands and children.
By all means, if the family chooses, the press should be allowed to photograph and otherwise record the return of our war dead. Perhaps a bit of the "soft and squishy" would sour our stomachs against war.
B
2 - Jordan Richardson
This is what you consider exploiting the troops, Obnox. Really? Been drinking the CPAC Koolaid?
3 - Dave Nalle
B-tone. Nice, sealed coffins don't convey the pain and death particularly graphically. Why don't we show the mangled bodies of the dead or live video of soldiers getting shot? Hell, let's show snuff films in elementary school.
OA did not suggest anything in this article about glorifying war. I think he just wants the privacy of the soldiers and their families respected. Do you respect the soliders or do you just objectify them as symbols of the evil of war?
Dave
4 - zingzing
if americans see the names of our fallen soldiers, then good. we sent them to their deaths. you know it, i know it, and now we'll all know it. we will see their remains coming home. it's good to see the cost of our ambitions. whether it be state-building (foolish) or oil-grubbing (greedy). what we do comes with a price. time to look at the bill.
"And if the whole rationale is to make Americans keenly aware of war costs, then what proponents are really looking for is some sort of media sponsored guilt trip. Does this make our country safer, or better? Does it help military families in any way? Not that I can tell."
if the media can show our dead coming back from overseas, then, yes, it will prevent further american stupidity.
"I object to the idea that without this, Americans are not keenly aware of the sacrifices of our soldiers overseas. I think about our troops overseas on a daily basis, and I can't even begin to imagine what they are going through."
i can't tell you what they're going through either, but i can tell you what they are traveling home in some of the time.
"Firstly, it scares would be enlistees with the obvious message that "this can happen to you.""
well, it can happen to you if you enlist. you had better be prepared for that, shouldn't you?
"The purpose of going to war isn't to have a debate or to make a philisophical point, it's to win the war. Do proponents of this action realize that?"
well, the purpose of arguing about going to war is to have a debate and make a philosophical point. once you've gone, it's all the same. blood here, blood there, blood everywhere. the point of arguing about war is not win or lose (that's what we have wars for) it's about whether or not we should be doing this in the first place. you can win a war, you can lose a war and you can stop a war. you can walk away. such is the way of life. forget about that option? (see vietnam.)
"Our enemies are starting to see a new administration with little experience, that is cutting military funding, closing Gitmo, setting terrorists free, and now letting the left wing media politicize our war dead. Our enemies realize today that with every American soldier killed in action, they've not only won a battle but also gained a propaganda victory with the help of their (hopefully) unwitting accomplices in the American government and media."
maybe they'll also see we're not oil-mad opportunistic assholes out on trading our blood for our energy needs. maybe they'll see we've got someone up there who doesn't have a daddy-fantasy fucking up his reasoning and making us into the most dangerous nation on the planet. maybe they'll see a guy with the name "barack obama," which sounds like a lot of their names, who doesn't hate them and doesn't think they're scum to scrape off our jackboots. maybe they'll see that we're not the great satan you so obviously see them as.
5 - Jim
Perhaps along with every photograph of soldier's coffins coming back from the war zone should be a video of the Twin Towers falling so that we might be politely reminded of why we are fighting this war in the first place.
Let us not forget that the freedom we enjoy has been paid for by the blood of those generations before us, and those yet to come.
Never has a generation of citizens come along (as now) that has not had to sacrifice for that which we take for granted.
To politicize those who have made this choice (of their own free will) to sacrifice their all for the benefit of the rest of us, is to cheapen their sacrifice in the name of "political correctness."
You tell me what's right.....
6 - Cannonshop
Here's a better idea, Jim-along with the pictures of soldier's coffins, we should include a picture of the balance-sheet of whichever media outlet is showing it, maybe a nice cartoon of a Ghoul wearing a press-badge to remind people that the Media are a for-profit organ, and they only want these pictures so that they can sell more air-time, more papers, etc. etc.
Essentially, eating from the death of Americans.
7 - Mark Eden
We should burn Whitman's poems and remove the headstones from National Cemeteries.
8 - pablo
"It's worth noting that Bush was a naval aviator who served this great country proudly during World War II, fighting along side fellow Americans."
It is also worth noting that his father Prescott was actively supporting the Nazis before and during the war through Union Banking Corporation, and Brown Brothers Harriman. So much so that the corporation that he was a Director of had their assets seized bye the federal government for trading with the enemy.
Your article is absurd, and as usual it is a conservative calling for limits on free speech, all the while cloaking yourself with the mantle of patriotism. I always thought patriots believed in abiding by the US Constitution which clearly mandates that only Congress can declare war, not the president, and not by a resolution which by its very nature, has no basis in law.
Signed
an un-obnoxious american
9 - Arch Conservative
I feel sorry for anyone that has an epiphany and only realizes war is a terrible thing and bases their entire opinion on war after having seen a few coffins on NBC nightly news.
Thank god the leftist moonbats we have to put up with today weren't around in 1941. Despite the fact that the moonbats idolize FDR he never sat down and try to reason with Hitler, Mussolini or Hirohito. He just told the boys in uniform to kick ass until there was no more ass to kick.
"If it was good enough for BJ Clinton it's good enough for you Barry!" It's sad that it's come to it but that is going to be more war cry over the next four years.
10 - Dave Nalle
We should burn Whitman's poems and remove the headstones from National Cemeteries.
I think we should also ritualistically burn Kiling's poems and turn West Point into an amusement park.
Dave
11 - Baritone
Well Dave, some of what you suggest might not be a bad idea. We have always sanitized war and killing in general. Hell, it wasn't until the film "The Wild Bunch" that Hollywood even acknowledged that we bleed when we get shot.
War is messy. Death in war is messy - splattered bone and sinew and gray matter.
I hardly objectify our soldiers.
Arch,
So you equate the war in Iraq with WWII? Interesting. The fact is there were a number of "leftist moonbats" back in the late 30s and early 40s who opposed our entering the war. They had a voice then, and we continue to have a voice now.
I know you think that our whole purpose as a nation is to "kick ass," that that is our mandate from, I don't know, I suppose from god or some such. If you think it's all so fucking great go over there and shoot a few bad guys. Maybe it'll get the blood flowing back into your brain.
B
12 - Cindy
O.A.
Bush was determined to have been lying to put the U.S. into a war for his own political reasons.
I won't bother arguing for all the Iraqi people that were killed. So, I'll just ask these questions--Is it okay with you that his lies put the U.S. in a war that even the CIA intelligence did not support? Is it okay to use citizen's lives for your own ends merely because you are a president?
Is whatever a president does okay with you?
Senate Intelligence Committee
The President of the United States told these things to our people and to the world, and they were false. According to the report released this morning by our Committee,
"Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence."
The Committee found that multiple CIA reports and a National Intelligence Estimate released in November 2002 - even as the Administration was in the drumbeat to war - "dismissed the claim that Iraq and al-Qa'ida were cooperating partners."
It was not true - and yet this President used this claim to convince the American public that there was a link between the Iraqi government and the terrorists that perpetrated the crimes of September 11, 2001.
Well, the investigation found that Bush lied about everything.
So, that's okay with you?
13 - Arch Conservative
"I know you think that our whole purpose as a nation is to "kick ass,"
As opposed to you whose philosophy is that we should all bend over and take it in the ass from illegals, muslim terrorists, the UN etc...
14 - Christopher Rose
Arch, I'm curious as to how you came up with this unusual philosophy that you attribute to
BaroniusBaritone.Are you regularly experiencing fantasies of being buggered by large groups of people? Is it projection or possibly even something you would actually like to happen?
15 - bliffle
#5 Jim says:
"Perhaps along with every photograph of soldier's coffins coming back from the war zone should be a video of the Twin Towers falling so that we might be politely reminded of why we are fighting this war in the first place."
Uhhh, I guess it's time to remind Jim that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
16 - Cindy
Big C: You may wish to change it to Baritone :-)
17 - Christopher Rose
Indeed I do and will, Cinders, thanks!
18 - Clavos
By all means, let's show the coffins coming home. Open the coffins and invite the news ghouls to film their contents.
Let's also show all the dead and injured in auto accidents on the tube, as well as murder victims, assault victims, and battered spouses.
Don't forget people killed in floods, tornadoes and hurricanes, as well.
Any of these could happen to any of us.
Let's show it all; make videos of the gore and blood and show it to the kids in elementary school while we're at it.
After all, it's good to let them know it could happen to them.
19 - Dave Nalle
Hey, didn''t I already make that comment, Clav?
Dave
20 - Cindy
I know people who 6 months ago didn't even know there is still a war in Afghanistan.
Let's show it all; make videos of the gore and blood and show it to the kids in elementary school while we're at it. (I'd save the blood and gore for high school; grammar school children could understand easily using storytelling.)
After all, it's good to let them know it could happen to them.
Rather than it could happen to them. It might change them into people who may wish a world where it doesn't happen to anyone.
21 - The Obnoxious American
To all the detractors of this article, I had one question for you:
How do you read this article, then raise questions about it, that are covered in the article? Could it be that you never read the article fully?
Rather than respond, I'm going to resort to once again quoting the contents of the article above. This should answer the queries of Baritone, Cindy and Zing. Next time, give the full article a read before commenting, as this is not your best form.
"The purpose of going to war isn't to have a debate or to make a philisophical point, it's to win the war. Do proponents of this action realize that?"
"Our enemies are starting to see a new administration with little experience, that is cutting military funding, closing Gitmo, setting terrorists free, and now letting the left wing media politicize our war dead. Our enemies realize today that with every American soldier killed in action, they've not only won a battle but also gained a propaganda victory with the help of their (hopefully) unwitting accomplices in the American government and media. "
22 - The Obnoxious American
And Cindy,
I've watched just about every televised Bush speech, as well as many talk show appearances by his administration (just like I now do with the Obama admin). I NEVER HEARD BUSH MAKE THE CASE THAT 9/11 WAS LINKED TO IRAQ. EVER. I don't know where you get this crap from, but you can't rewrite what happened.
Bush was clear that having Saddam in power was bad for U.S. security, the same statement made by the TWO previous presidents before him. What's laughable is when liberals talk about Iraq as if everything was fine, but apparently Bill Clinton felt there was enough reason to go to bomb Iraq, and even made the removal of Saddam his policy. Was Clinton a war monger and liar too?
23 - The Obnoxious American
"Was Clinton a war monger and liar too?
Wait, don't answer that second part of the question...
24 - Hope and Change?
Saddam in power was bad for U.S. security...we all knew it, the world knew..
The morons who deny it are just too stupid to admit that Bush did the right thing...
25 - STM
Yeah, he did do the right thing. He just went about it the wrong way.