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“Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.”

Orcinus: David Neiwert: ‘One of the real keys to understanding our situation is realizing that conservatism and the “conservative movement” are in fact two entirely different things.’

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.