Nightline To Once Again Read Names of the Fallen

Cherenkoff wonders why they don't devote more time to the accomplishments of the fallen -- and those still alive -- rather than simply noting their deaths. He proposes showing the faces and reading the names of all 170,000 troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's unworkable, of course.

The media is crafty on this. They know that these fallen heroes do deserve a tribute; conservatives can hardly take the stance of the Daily Kos and say "Screw 'em; I feel nothing for these mercenaries."

These brave men and women deserve an in memorium segment. If an assistant sound engineer on The Wizard of Oz deserves one during the Oscars, surely men and women fighting to defend this country from terrorists deserve one too.

And furthermore, they're quite right that "informing the public" includes informing the public of the sacrifice this country -- and these particular soldiers and their families -- are making/have made in defending us.

No argument.

The trouble is, of course, that they're rather cynical and selective about what "informing the public" requires. Informing the public requires not just wallowing in the deaths and injuries; it requires also showing what these men and women died to accomplish. It would require also showing two liberated peoples, free elections being held in formerly barbaric tyrant-controlled dysfunctional terror-states, and girls being allowed to attend school for the first time.

ABCNews will self-righteously claim they're honoring the lives, and deaths, of these brave men and women by noting their deaths. Well-- seems to me that if a fireman dies rescuing three children from a four-alarm blaze, we just don't note that someone has died, but what heroic service that man died performing.

If ABCNews truly wants to honor these men and women, they would make a special note of their accomplishments.

But they don't actually want to honor the fallen. They want to simply display the list of the dead and nail it to the gate of the White House.

And that's not a tribute to the dead. That's merely a self-serving and cynical use of fallen heroes for rank political purposes.

posted by Ace at 12:18 PM

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