Sad, but not sensational news

by David Grand
October 30, 2003

I know some of my neighbors think I'm an eccentric old man, if for no other reasons than that I keep to myself most of the time and continue planting so many trees that my property is starting to resemble a forest preserve. And when I tell them I'm preparing a living memorial to my time on earth, their eyes open wide as saucers in disbelief. 

So, I was not surprised when one of them approached me the other day to ask why the American flag on my pole in the front yard was always flying at half-mast, when there'd been no announced national, state or local day of mourning. Is it, he asked in a sarcastic tone, because the ropes are tangled up, or because you're just too lazy to hoist it to the top?

No, I said, it works fine. And, yes, I could run it all the way up. But I chose not to as a sign of personal mourning for every soldier whose died in Iraq since the president declared the war over on May 1. And inasmuch as hardly a day goes by without one or more of them dying from small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide bombings and mines, it wouldn't make any sense to run it up the pole for just a few hours.

Another reason I do it is because of the way the reports of battle causalities are, more than not, played down in the press. For example, in the Oct. 18 edition of a Baltimore paper, the killing of four soldiers the previous day- the date that fatalities (due to hostile attacks) crossed over the 100 mark- was buried in the back pages (page 13 to be exact). Apparently, its editors felt it wasn't newsworthy or sensational enough to be featured in the paper, let alone be headlined on the front page. (To their credit, such reports are highlighted on TV news channels.)

Is that, I wondered, because they believe its readers have become immune to reading of the near-daily, grisly statistics, or that they share the callous attitude of the brass in the Pentagon, that as long as U.S. troops are dying by ones and twos, they can deal with it. Try and tell that to the parents and wives, who respond to that dreaded knock on the door and see a officer in his dress uniform, speaking through clenched teeth as he says, "I regret to inform you...." 

By way of contrast, the war news in WW 2 (including causality figures) was splashed over the front pages and in newsreels, and was the main topic in the nightly, radio broadcasts of such widely listened-to news commentators as Edward R. Murrow and H.V. Kaltenborn. I can still hear Kaltenborn's oft-repeated opening: "Well, there's bad news tonight."

And that world war was also distinct from later wars in other ways. FIrst and foremost, that it had the complete backing of the American people; that the causality figures were a staggering 292,000 battle deaths and 115,000 "other" deaths; and that in the front window of every home that had someone in the service, you'd see a silk pennant, with one or more blue stars on it, or a gold star signifying they'd lost a loved one. There were five gold stars on the one hanging in the window of the Sullivan brothers family home, who'd been killed on the same ship.

Regrettably, the prospect of an ever-increasing number of doors being knocked on by the bearers of heartbreaking news appears most likely, what with the attacks on our troops escalating from an average of 20 to 35 a day; and with Osama bin Laden warning Iraqis not to cooperate with the Americans, and calling upon young people of Islam everywhere to wage a jihad (holy war) against them.

And equally troublesome is, as a writer in the Newsweek magazine put it: "the analogy Americans might have to worry about is not the one frequently made-to Vietnam-but to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. With the Palestinians left too long under foreign rule, even the military might of Israel has been unable to quell the resistance or to keep its soldiers safe."

I'd better sign-off now, so I can get up early to make sure that pesky neighbor hasn't raised my flag to the top during the night.