And I hope you're having a memorable Memorial Day weekend.
Today's Doonesbury strip lists all of our Iraq-related military casualties as of the date the strip went to press, set in very tiny type to get them all in. Garry Trudeau is being accused of making a "political statement," which I suppose is like accusing Tony Bennett of singing about San Francisco. We seem to have reached the stage in this country where to mention our war dead is to dishonor them by using them in a political statement and to not mention them is to show disrespect and to make — you guessed it — a political statement. I'm not sure I've ever heard a mention of fallen soldiers from any war that did not include some subtext…either about stopping war or about how you should be proud to go and die for your country in the next one.
As folks hurl arguments back and forth about the recent military deaths, it's easy to imagine every argument being reversed. Bush has not attended funerals and there has been an active attempt to prevent photos of flag-draped caskets from being seen. That is viewed as the Bush administration trying to suppress imagery that might turn America against their war efforts and it's called disrespectful. But if Bush were to be seen at many funerals, he'd be accused of turning them into a "photo op" and if the coffins were routinely displayed, all manner of ulterior motives would be ascribed to that. And in other hands, what Trudeau did today (or what Koppel did the other week on Nightline) would be hailed as a genuine gesture of reverence.
It also bothers me that so much of Memorial Day, as well as talk of the human cost of war, is about dead bodies. I don't mean to minimize those sickening numbers in any way but they're not the whole story. Not only are lives ended in war but lives are shattered. Men and women come back minus limbs or with physical scars that will never heal. Some suffer emotional damage, as do their families. Years ago, I worked with a guy who'd spent a year in Vietnam and was still enduring nightmares and popping tranquilizers due to (he said) that experience. But he didn't show up on any stats that tracked the dead or disabled from 'Nam. On Memorial Day, guys like him never got a mention. He also never got any worthwhile medical or financial support from his government.
A lot of people in this country — a growing number, if we believe the polls — are calling for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, quickly if not immediately. John Kerry has not called for this. In fact, I'm not sure I can explain how his position on the war is that different from Bush's, although Kerry has long been for U.N. oversight and more international cooperation…a view to which Bush seems to be moving. Still, a lot of people are attacking Kerry as if he had called for quick withdrawal or as if his Iraq plan was utterly unlike the current course of action. (Al Gore's fiery speech the other day is also getting criticized as if he'd demanded an immediate pullout…which is not at all what he said.) I don't know what's going to happen except that next Memorial Day, I'm afraid, Garry Trudeau is going to have to use an even smaller typeface…and maybe serialize the names over a whole week.