Funerals as a Weapon

There’s lots of talk on the net about the complaints that President Bush hasn't attended any funerals for military personnel killed in Iraq. Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan have commented on the very appropriate reasons why Bush has not done so. John Cole looks at the history of Presidents attending such funerals and finds that there isn't much of one.

Krauthammer says of the Ba'athist/Islamist mix in Iraq that "They have only one way of winning: by making U.S. casualties so painful that America decides to give up and go home." Unfortunately, many on the hard left have the same immediate goal as the Ba'athists and Islamists. They want the U.S. to give up and go home. Perhaps most of them do not wish for an increase in U.S. casualties (though there are definitely some who do), but they are quite willing to use what deaths there are to further their goals. It is not political or electoral damage to Bush that they are primarily after, though they'll take that if they can get it, but rather U.S. failure in Iraq. And like the Ba'athists and Islamists, they believe U.S. deaths can deliver this.

To amplify the effects of these deaths, they need the media. The media in turn is always hungry for new pictures and new controversies. To get these pictures, many in the media left complained about the ban on taking pictures of caskets being unloaded at Dover AFB. The Dover idea didn't go very far and peaked relatively early, because it was seen primarily as a media issue. It had no traction in the public's imagination. It was at that point that the complaints about funerals began to take off.

The thought of leftists concerned that the President might not be honoring the sacrifice of service members sufficiently is ludicrous just on its own, but the early focus on pictures from Dover, which have nothing to do with Bush recognizing sacrifice, seals the deal for me. Most of these complaints have nothing to do with the President honoring troops and everything to do with keeping U.S. casualties as the top story on TV, with pictures. Where the President goes, cameras follow, so let's try to get him to go to funerals.

To be sure, many people who’ve bought into the idea of the President attending funerals do not share the anti-U.S. goal. I'm not claiming that everyone who voices that complaint wishes to see America fail there. But the people buying into the idea are certainly useful to those who wish to see a failure in Iraq- the anti-globalists, anti-capitalists, anti-liberals, tranzis, and the old guard anti-war peaceniks. Except for the last group, most of these want the U.S. to lose the war in Iraq because of ideology and their version of geopolitics. Funerals should not become a weapon in their fight against the U.S.