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An interesting bit of news from Seattle
A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.
"I feel like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out. I have to admit I liked my job, and I liked what I did," Silicio said.
The photo accompanies the story, of course.
For my part, I can't comprehend the left's ghoulish fascination with photos of coffins. Since the military is certainly not keeping secret the number of casualties of war, another motive seems likely.
The left is desperate for someone fighting the War on Terror to turn and join their cause. As reported here earlier, lacking a wounded GI to do this they are currently fabricating them in comic strips.
The dead offer them an easier target. Like Dennis Kucinich's reprehensible abuse of America's fallen some months ago, an imaginary message from the dead to the living can be implied.
This is yet another right/wrong issue twisted into a right/left issue.
In the early part of the last century, many referred hopefully to World War One (back when it wasn't necessary to clarify it with "One") as the "War to end all Wars". George Santayana responded famously that "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Perhaps some day that statement will be true.
Update: Looks like 100s of photos are now available online. (See here and here.)
I truly don't see the attraction, but I note at least one commenter below (see "enditem") confirms the whole "putting lies in the mouths of the dead" theory.
Update 2: The New York Times editors must read Mudville. Here's their April 23rd editorial on this issue (a day after the original here):
Fans of the cartoon strip "Doonesbury" have been following the travails of B. D., the football-helmeted Vietnam vet who somehow wound up back under fire in Iraq. In a series of strips that one Colorado paper decried as unnecessarily "graphic violent battlefield depictions," B. D. was wounded and lost his lower leg. Most of the response has apparently been far more positive than the Colorado newspaper's, but the strip's creator, Garry Trudeau, is lucky that he works with ink rather than film. In the real Middle East, an American worker in Kuwait was fired this week when a newspaper printed a photo she had taken of a cargo plane full of coffins draped in American flags.
They came oh so close to a moment of lucidity, then veered sharply away just short of acknowledging the imaginary status of their heroes. They conclude by playing both sides of the fence:
Since 1991, the Defense Department has prohibited taking photographs of the coffins of members of the armed services while they are being transported back to the United States. The reverent portrait Ms. Silicio produced demonstrates how irrational that policy is. The theory seems to be that the pictures are intrusive, or possibly hurtful, to bereaved families. But it seems far more likely that the Pentagon is concerned about the impact that photos of large numbers of flag-draped coffins may have on the American public's attitude toward the war.That certainly underestimates the fortitude of average citizens, who are able to accept the cost of war whenever they are confident that the cause is right. American men and women are currently suffering danger, death and injury every day in Iraq. The least those of us back home can do is to bear witness to the sacrifice of the real soldiers as well as the fictional.
Do you want to bear witness? If you seek the dead I say do so here. Then go here or here.
