MOURNING IN AMERICA
George W. Bush, Jr. cannot find it within himself to attend any of the over 370 funerals for the soldiers that he has deliberately put in harm’s way in Iraq. Not one. His handlers didn’t even let him acknowledge – much less pretend to mourn – the 15 soldiers who got shot down last weekend as their helicopter headed toward their two-week furloughs. It is apparently written in the Book of Rove that getting too close to the deaths you cause might get you, well, dirty.
But get your house burned out in the California wildfires, and our Spinner-in-Chief will be out there, dispensing stiff hugs and sympathy. I’m sure it’s easier for Junior to understand and empathize with a homeowner facing the worst in material disaster than it is for him to comprehend the ultimate sacrifice of service to the nation’s misguided leaders. Bush is more comfortable pretending to pick up the pieces after a natural disaster than he is confronting the consequences of the man-made disaster of his own policies.
Since the Bushies have banned all coverage of the sad coffins arriving daily at Dover Air Force base and pushed all remembrance of the dead into the ether of media blackout, we wouldn’t know if Bush has shown up at any of these events or not. His flacks tell us that he has shown up somewhere, at sometime to console the families of the dead for their loss. No doubt the families so visited have been screened for support of Bush’s Folly, a group no doubt growing smaller among military families as the number of body bags grows larger. Perhaps it’s better that Bush just stay away, lest he encounter the true rage he deserves. It is unlikely – his embarrassing, unnatural hugs aside – that Bush would be able to console anyone anyway at this point. His appearance at a military funeral would just be rubbing salt in the open wounds of the families of the Unnecessary Dead.
But, throughout history, that has one of the duties of the person most responsible for the deaths of your men and women in uniform. Presidents are supposed to show up at battle-death funerals – at least once in a while – and look the families in their tear-streaked faces. When military action is necessary and just for the nation’s security or in the cause of humanitarianism, the president and the families mourn together, not only for the loss, but because the loss was necessary. With the invasion in Iraq – despite the deliberate lies – the nation’s security was not at risk and there was no humanitarian crisis that doesn’t exist in dozens of other countries run by petty tyrants.
Bush knows and the families know that their sons and daughters lives were wasted by cynical politicians playing geopolitical games. Bush doesn’t show his face at military funerals because he can’t. Iraqi nationalists have taken our sad president up on his challenge to "bring it on". Bush moves on to the next outrage. The families cannot.
1:15:45 PM 
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