Under The Rug No Longer

Caption: From left, President Barack Obama, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel V. Wright and Army Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass salute as a team of soldiers carry the remains of Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin during a dignified transfer ceremony on Dover Air Force Base, Del., Oct. 29, 2009. U.S. Air Force photo by Jason Minto

Image credit: Jason Minto/U.S. Army

One thing that I would never have thought of criticizing Barack Obama for is this:

President Obama before dawn this morning paid tribute to the 18 U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan Monday, making a surprise trip to Dover Air Force Base as their bodies returned home to the United States.

The solemn visit - Obama's first such experience since taking office and lifting the ban on photographing the war dead - comes as he's wrestling with a decision to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama Makes Surprise Overnight Visit To Dover To Honor Troops Killed In Afghanistan

For eight years now, we've been hiding this part of the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush Administration tried to hide the rows of caskets from us, as though they were some sort of distraction. They never asked Americans to give up anything to pursue those wars, other than the lives of the ones who died or lost their loved ones.

As you might imagine, bringing these losses to light doesn't sit too well with the people who started those wars, and then failed to win them:

Cheney, on Fox News Radio's John Gibson Show yesterday [Oct. 29]:

I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this.

It's not clear exactly what Cheney is referring to when she says, "Bush used to do it without the cameras."
...
[A]s CBS's Mark Knoller reported yesterday, Obama was the first president to visit arriving dead at Dover during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq -- meaning that when it came to taking trips to Dover like Obama did yesterday morning, Bush never used to "do it" at all.

Liz Cheney Suggests Obama Honored Fallen Soldiers For The Publicity

Like her father, Liz Cheney isn't shy about using weasel words like "I think that". She didn't check whether what she said was actually true before she said it, which might be excusable if she hadn't anticipated the question. I suspect that she's not going to retract this assertion, however. Let's see if I'm wrong on that one.

Even if I were in favor of these wars (at one time I was in favor of the war in Afghanistan) I would still think that hiding the bodies of returning military personnel in this way does more to dishonor them than publishing a few pictures. Among Americans, the human cost of these wars is paid almost exclusively by the military and their families. Sweeping the losses they experience in wars under the rug does nothing to honor their sacrifice. We should openly acknowledge and appreciate those sacrifices. As Blue Texan reminds us, past conservative Presidents weren't shy about visiting the returning dead.

That some conservatives seem to think otherwise, and that there are folks in the press corps in DC who take such assertions seriously, shows how starkly isolated these folks are from the rest of us.

UPDATE: Added the links in the second to last paragraph, which discuss many of the human costs of these wars we're fighting.