Pentagon to Allow Photos of Returning War Dead

Thursday, February 26, 2009

This is something that has really bothered me over the last eight years. Why can't we see the dead? Ever wonder why we as Americans seem so far removed from the cultures of other countries around the world? Well, I am here to tell you one of the big reasons...we don't know death. There are a lot of people that would be upset by that statement "my Mom died last year," they might say or "My best friend died from Cancer," and I feel your pain, I really do. My Dad died when I was eleven years old on the couch right next to me, I got your pain right here. But unlike other cultures who celebrate their elders and bring the dying and even their dead into their homes embracing that passage of life as we know it, we simply chose not to acknowledge it at all. Is there anyone out there who really does not know that death happens? Even children too young to have had any real life experience with it should be aware that it happens, pets die, plants die, parents die and soldiers die. It happens, it is a fact of life and one that we would be better off to embrace than pretend it isn't going to happen to everyone you know at some point including yourself.

So what is the big deal with seeing photos of flag draped coffins? One thing, now you know. Now you know how many men and women fighting for this country don't come back to hug their families and tuck their children into bed at night. We have all heard the number on the news, the number of soldiers that have been killed overseas but no one wants be a number. Why? Because you can't identify with a number, numbers don't have faces, they don't have stories. You tell me what effects you more some anchor on the nightly news saying "there were 15 soldiers killed today in Fallujah" or video of a line of fifteen coffins being unloaded from a military plane? That's what I thought.

Photo from TheMemoryHole.org