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On April 7, Tami Silicio, a civilian contract worker, captured a somber-yet-tasteful photograph of an aircraft cargo hold full of U.S. flag-draped coffins of soldiers being returned from Iraq via Kuwait (similar to the photo shown here — see update at end of this entry).

The Seattle Times published Silicio’s photo on April 19 in article The somber task of honoring the fallen (alternate photo location) —

On the April day depicted in the photograph that accompanies this story, more than 20 coffins went into a cargo plane bound for Germany [from Kuwait]. Silicio says those who lost loved ones in Iraq should understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

Two days later on April 21, Tami’s employer, U.S. military contractor Maytag Aircraft Corp. fires her and her husband, as reported in the Boston Globe, Woman fired by military contractor for published photograph of flag-draped U.S. coffins.

This really bugs me. I understand (but don’t accept) the point that Maytag Aircraft Corp. is within rights firing an employee if that employee breaks a no-photos policy. And I understand the point that some families of the dead may not want media publicity, although I don’t see how the anonymity of flag-draped coffins invades anyone’s privacy. I see it more as honoring their sacrifice. (See Seattle Times, Images of war dead a sensitive subject.)

But I’m calling a spade a spade: This no-photos policy is government censorship, a hiding of the harsh realities of war from the U.S. populace, exposure to which might give the most gung-ho warhawks pause, during which pause the realization might dawn that it is failed U.S. policy that is killing these troops.

If we can’t state clearly why these sons and daughters and friends and relatives are dying and why “it’s worth it,” then we need to move heaven and earth to stop the dying. Now.

Every day we are silent means new cargo holds full of coffins, just like the one Tami photographed, returning home in secret, day after day after day.

My whole life I’ve wondered how so many German Christians in the 1930s could stand by as Nazi fascism rose to power. Now I think I know: being silent, being passive, giving tacit approval, enabled its rise. We’re enabling its rise again. If I sound like I’m overstating, see if the dictionary definition isn’t sounding eerily familiar:

fas·cism. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Our U.S. “belligerent nationalism” is, sad to say, obvious to the whole world. As to the racism, it’s visible in our having killed an estimated 10,000+ Iraqi civilians, whom we’re not even bothering to count accurately. Many of these were innocents, and nearly all of them have families now bearing all the reason anyone needs to seek revenge, retaliation, retribution. Just as we’re doing, some of these victims’ friends and families will act to effect retribution. Liberation my ass. Liberating people from their bodies is not liberation. We are making the world’s terror situation incomparably worse:

“When the fighting is over in Fallujah, I will sell everything I have, even my home,” said a resistance fighter who gave his name as Abu Taif Mashhadani. He wept as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter, who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. “I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed.”
—Revolts in Iraq Deepen Crisis In Occupation (via Billmon)

If there’s hopeful news whispering within this deadly cacophony, I think it’s this: we’re only three requirements short of getting back on track. We need to —

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.
(Now this is anti-terrorism!)

A detailed plan? No — this is a new direction that affects all plans and likely leads to altogether different ends. Can we do these things? To my surprise, I believe we can. One at a time, each of us learns, each of us chooses. And I have a hunch I’m Monkey #94.

[story links via Daily Kos and The Village Gate]

2004-04-23 update: And the wall comes a-tumblin’ down? Even if in slo-mo overall, this came quickly: The New York Times runs story today, Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken. Bill Kick, operator of The Memory Hole, filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year asking for photos of coffins arriving from Iraq at Dover AFB in Delaware:

The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. …

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. …

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should not be.

I was wondering about this at lunch [on Aug 8], and now — lo and behold — Kos has pointed out, using data from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, that

We have now lost more men and women [after] the fall of the Baghdad statue [than before].

That’s 258 Americans plus 44 Brits dead, 54 of them since Bush said “Bring ‘em on.”

We’re coming up way too rapidly on more killed after Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln than before.

Of course, as I attribute to Iraqi people equal, inestimable value in the sight of God, I am compelled to note that the reported Iraqi civilian death count at Iraq Body Count is now 6,087–7,798.

2003-08-26 update: We’ve hit another sad milestone that can’t be erased, can’t be undone. This, paraphrased from the AP, as alerted by RonK at dKos:

We have now lost more men and women after Mr. Bush announced from the aircraft carrier that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended” than before.

That’s now 277 Americans plus 49 Brits dead (according to ICCC).

And today’s Iraq Body Count numbering of Iraqi civilian deaths: 6,113–7,830. (Iraqi casualty count is 20,000+.)

2003-08-10 update: Today I see in passing an interesting (and related) letter at the Horse that depicts an even grimmer reality. Note the following consequence of word misuse applies independent of one’s political position:

AP has been misusing the word “casualty” with regard to the “preemptive” US action in Iraq with dismaying regularity.

Today’s example [Mike: I’m not sure when “today” was] from Yahoo[:]

  Since President Bush announced an end to major
  combat in Iraq on May 1, 56 soldiers have died
  in combat. The total combat casualties in the
  war has climbed to 170 …

The true number of casualties is much higher, likely in the thousands.

A “casualty” is not only a dead soldier. The word also signifies the injured, captured, and MIA.

Misusing the word “casualty” to report only combat deaths misleads the reader into believing the number of US soldiers whose lives have been shattered by this chosen war is an order of magnitude smaller than is actually the case.

If your only experience of war is from watching TV where bloodless bullets drop soldiers with a gentle “Ugh”, perhaps it’s hard to appreciate how long it takes for a skull fracture to heal, how demoralizing it feels to return to your wife without legs, or the unimaginable frustration of doing anything without hands. Please do not trivialize the sacrifice of these men by washing away their numbers away through a dishonest choice of words. …

If you mean to count the dead, dare to use the word “dead”. If you mean to count casualties, dare to count them all.

Cmdr. MacBragg
PsyOps Unit 44
Groom Lake AFB

In today’s Washington Post article The war after the war:

Twice a week, transport planes land at Andrews Air Force Base, bringing fresh casualties. Accidents, ambushes, pockets of resistance. Nearly 650 soldiers have passed through Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] during Operation Iraqi Freedom, more than half of them since the conflict was officially declared over.

On TV, the war was a rout, with infrared tanks rolling toward Baghdad on a desert soundstage. But the permanent realities unfold more quietly on Georgia Avenue NW, behind the black iron gates of the nation’s largest military hospital.

Associated WaPo photo gallery The Soldiers of Ward 57 is required viewing for every American IMO.

If I or anyone I know has to sacrifice a limb or a life for this country as these guys have, it had damn well better be for an unshakeably sound reason. If there’s any doubt as to why we’re doing it, any doubt whatsoever, then the cost is unthinkable.

In this conflict, not only is there some doubt as to why we’re doing it, it’s essentially all doubt; there’s hardly a trace of evidence to support our having launched a preemptive war against Iraq.

This situation goes far beyond politics: As one of my theological heroes Jim Wallis said of this conflict back in May, “America is making not only a political mistake, not only a theological mistake; we are making a spiritual mistake.”

I am ferociously angry at the men and spiritual powers in the White House that are doing this. And I am simultanously overcome with compassion for our longsuffering men and women in uniform who are bearing the consequences.

One powerful way to honor and give meaning to our soldiers’ sacrifices is to let their sacrifices motivate us to forcible action that stops further sacrifice in this unjust, unnecessary, unwinnable, ungodly, unending war.

For me this means, Bring them home. Initiate regime change here.

[thoughts initiated by Daily Kos entries The men of Ward 57 and How to volunteer at military and veterans hospitals]