Dover, Delaware is apparently a real place. My entire life I've lived with the comfortable assumption that the entire state of Delaware was made up. I don't know who could possibly gain something from making up a whole state but, think about it for a sec; has anyone ever been to Delaware? Does anyone even know anyone from Delaware? Has anything ever come out of Delaware that merits notice? Is Delaware on the way to somewhere else?
Turns out, not only is Delaware real, but it has a city very important to the US military. Dover, Delaware is the site of the military air base where most of the casualites from the Iraq war arrive back in the States. Day after day, plane after plane brings home what's left of the warm bodies the Bush administration has sent on their muderously deceitful errand. The media is not allowed to see these arrivals. Therefore, YOU are not allowed to see them.
Since the year 2000, the US military has had a fairly lax policy that prohibits any media coverage when our soldiers come home deceased. For the most part, this ban was a "spirit of the law" rather than a "letter of the law" sort of arrangement. Largely unenforced, it was primarily a nod towards protocol. This protocol involved the belief of national leaders that, since Vietnam, the televised images of coffins touching down on American soil was the biggest factor in turning the public's opinion of a war around.
This is an idea that is very much correct. Vietnam was the world's first televised war, and it did not agree with the public. The military learned its lesson, to some extent, and, during the Gulf War, it mainly televised images that appeared to be taken straight from video games. Laser-guided bombs tracking right down to the building they destroyed; pitch black gun fights seen in spooky green night vision so the tracer rounds looked like laser bolts; Baghdad and oil fields set ablaze with holy fire. There were still newscasts of soldier's caskets returning, but these images were less reported than the other angles of the war.
The Bush Boys seemed content with these loose arrangements until March, 2003, when they issued the same directive, but to be rigidly enforced this time. The Pentagon stated that "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein airbase or Dover base, to include interim stops." Ramstein is our German air base, and is usually the first stop for a dead soldier's homeward journey.
This was an obvious step for the administration to take. With full realization that the global community as well as the American citezenry were not on board for this war, Bush and his cronies barred the most visceral portrayal of its cost. By issuing this mandate, the US government assured that the public could continue to pretend that we weren't in an awful situation.
The military refers to this as the "Dover Test." The implications are fairly obvious. The public must be so convinced that war is the only answer, so nearly unanimous in their vote of confidence, that their support remains steadfast despite the visual evidence of sons and daughters of democracy returning home very much perished.
Even in the Gulf War, dominated by coverage of impersonal, remote destruction and Iraqi militia surrendering to CNN cameramen, the public was allowed to see what its tax dollars were buying. At one point in 1990, Bush Sr. was shown delivering a press briefing while the other side of the screen televised the dead returning to Dover. This was unfortunate for the President, but valuable to a constituency obsessed with yellow ribbons, oak trees, and "Bring Em Home Safe" banners. They were not all coming home safe, and those coffins, those flag-draped coffins, helped sober a populace intoxicated by a war that seemed to have almost no casualties.
Tami Silicio worked for Maytag Aircraft until April 22, 2004. The company is a Defense Department contractor and Silicio worked at the Kuwait International Airport. She took a photo of twenty flag-covered caskets that had been loaded into a plane for transport. She had no intentions other than to document the events going on around her. Moved by the sight of soldiers assiduously arranging flags over their fallen comrades, she took two pictures, e-mailing one back home to Seattle. The Seattle Times expressed their desire to publish the photo, and, wishing to show families how lovingly their dead children were treated, Silicio agreed.
She was fired a blazing quick four days after the picture appeared in the paper. Her husband, also an employee of Maytag, was canned as well.
Having never seen the image in the Seattle Times, the picture I'm left with is still crystal clear. The current war in Iraq has miserably failed the Dover Test. Because public opinion will plummet even further than it is now if we have more information, we are no longer allowed to see America's warriors come home on their shields. Because the Bush Fraternity is terrified that physical evidence of their drastic, arrogant mistake will be dragged into the light, they clamp down ever tighter on the media. A media that is increasingly cowed by the notion that this administration has won the war against them. The Truth has never been free, but now it is no longer even printable. Reporters pay for it every day in their blood, only to discover that the communication conglomerates who own their souls will not let them tell it. The Goliath of government has finally crushed the David of journalism.
The Patriot Act and its attendant policies ensure that the only people who can be identified as patriots are those who blindly adhere to the government's definitions of such. Bush himself has stated that we are either with him, or we are with the terrorists. But, as Americans, we are guaranteed the right to criticize our leaders and their actions. Access to information and the option to oppose what we know to be wrong is our birthright, and a redoubtable force that Bush would take away from us.
The rest of the world sees us as uneducated, armed louts ready to drop our planetary police corps into whatever fray we wish. It's time we showed them what we really are, what we have been since our inception: a belligerent nation of intelligent iconoclasts determined to raise hell and hold our putative leaders accountable for each and every step they take. Until our freedoms are reaffirmed, freedoms our fathers paid dearly for, we are just a castrated dog snarling behind a master that would just as soon kick us as show us affection.
If you are reading this blog, or if you know someone who would like to see it, your government does not care about you. It is working at its full capacity to make certain that your opinions and ideas will never see the light of day. I am proud to be an American, and I refuse to be shamed by "elected" officials who speak for a shrinking wedge of the populace. I DO NOT support the current government and I believe it has shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is the true axis of evil. We are honor-bound by the tears of our bewildered nation to stand up and reclaim the Truth. It belongs to everyone. Don't let the bastards cut your balls off and tell you it's for your own good.
Wake up and resist.
(Most of the hard facts in this post were taken from a book called Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media, by Craig Crawford. I strongly recommend it if you have any desire to learn how to be an informed citizen, rather than just a pissed-off voter.)
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3 comments:
However, as someone who faces the very real possibility of my husband coming home from the war in a box, in that horrifying event I would appreciate a certain amount of privacy in what would be an extremely personal moment. The Army can take him from me and turn him into a number, but the media wouldn't have the right to impersonalize him as well, and spin his death into a political agenda. He made the choice to join up, he accepts that he may in fact have to give his life for his country, whether or not he agrees with it, but he did not chose or accept that my pain would be blazoned across every tv in every living room all across the nation. Every boy or girl in those boxes has someone waiting for them. Leave them alone.
-m
I appreciate your fear, and can't imagine sending my spouse off to war. However, your privacy would remain secure should the worst come to be. When our soldiers come home under the flag, the media doesn't broadcast the names associated with the caskets. They don't reel off the list of the deceased as the boxes roll out. Journalists are simply asking for one of their basic, job-related rights to be restored: the right to show the public what all this is costing us.
Brandon will never be just a number, no matter what the Army tells you. He's part of something huge, something with its pain already blazoned across every tv in the nation. And it's not impersonal, and it's not political; it's a pain that affects every individual on a private level. This pain, though personal, is not separate from the war. The war is the root of this hurt, and journalists need to be able to chronicle the symptoms as well as the cause.
This is necessary if America is ever to stand up and demand good people like your husband stop being sent away. If it weren't for the media, the public's opinion of Vietnam never would have swung the way it did. And we are ALL waiting for those boys and girls when they come home in boxes. Waiting to give respect and honor and to show their memory that we are working to save others like them.
That being said, I hate that Brandon is going over there. I hate that ANYONE is going over there, but he joins the short list of friends I have in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If you're unwilling to hide him in my attic, I'll understand. The offer's there, though.
Also, I'm here, ready to do whatever you need me to do for you while he's gone. Anything I can do to help, in any way, please tell me.
Love you, M.
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