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President Obama Saluting the Fallen
I respect President Obama who early this morning honored our killed-in-action troops arriving home in flag-draped coffins. George W. Bush banned the press from photographing troops arriving home; and he would not be seen next to coffins as the fallen would hurt the image of the great "decider." Bush wanted his wars clean, neat, off-the-books, no sacrifice from the citizenry, just a composite of images and impressions of a swaggering, fakeo-tough guy president that Karl Rove could present to the nation. And veterans, piss on them especially those Vietnam War guys. Bush is gone, but Obama needs to repudiate in policy. That promise that change is possible is why many elected Obama one year ago.
Bush never would have dirtied himself with the realities of war; Obama’s change is welcome and his respect shown in the most significant change yet of his administration.
Obama honors fallen Americans at Dover
By Ben Feller,
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – Standing in the pre-dawn darkness, President Barack Obama saw the real cost of the war in Afghanistan: The Americans who return in flag-covered cases while much of the nation sleeps in peace.
In a midnight dash to this Delaware base, where U.S. forces killed overseas come home, Obama honored the return of 18 fallen Americans Thursday. All were killed this week in Afghanistan, a brutal stretch that turned October into the most deadly month for U.S. troops since the war began.
The dramatic image of Obama on the tarmac was a portrait not witnessed in years. Former President George W. Bush spent lots of time with grieving military families but never went to Dover to greet the remains coming off the cargo plane. Obama did so with the weight of knowing he may soon send more troops off to war.
For all the talk of his potential troop increase — maybe 40,000, maybe some other large figure — Obama got a grim reminder of the number that counts: one.
His name was Dale R. Griffin, an Army sergeant from Terre Haute, Ind. He was the last fallen soldier to come before Obama. And his remains were the only ones to be honored in full view of the media with the permission of his family. A ban on such coverage was lifted this year under Obama’s watch.
The president led a team of officials onto the gray C-17 cargo plane carrying Griffin, and then back off, where they stood for several minutes in a line of honor.
It was not quite 4 a.m. The sky was black and a yellowish light came from poles flanking the flight. The only sounds were a whirring power unit on the plane and the clicking of cameras. A blue vehicle carrying members of Griffin’s family pulled up.
The president saluted as six soldiers in camouflage and black berets carried Griffin’s remains into a waiting white van.
The military calls the process a dignified transfer, not a ceremony, because there is nothing to celebrate. The cases are not labeled coffins, although they come off looking that way, enveloped in flags.
On a clear fall night, the president zipped to Dover in about 40 minutes. He immediately spoke privately in a chapel with all the family members.
The solemn process of transferring remains of 15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency agents unfolded in four separate movements. Obama took part in all of them. A chaplain offered prayers for the fallen, the crews that brought them home, the families who lost a loved one, and a nation embroiled in war.
By 4:45 a.m., the president had touched back down on the South Lawn, where even an active White House was sleepy.
He walked inside, alone.
A president of two inherited wars, Obama is winding down U.S. involvement in Iraq, but the troubled war in Afghanistan is only widening. It has become the dominant foreign policy change of his early presidency. The stability of Afghanistan remains in doubt while the support of the American people is waning.
At least 55 U.S. forces have been killed in October. That’s the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.
Obama is faced with a crucial moment: How to keep al-Qaida terrorists from taking root again in Afghanistan without sinking more American lives and money into a war that isn’t working. He is in the midst of an intense review of his war strategy. Aides say he is weeks away from making an announcement.
The president apparently wanted to go to Dover now given the enormous blow to U.S. forces just this week.
On Monday, a U.S. military helicopter crashed returning from the scene of a firefight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers in western Afghanistan, killing 10 Americans including three DEA agents. In a separate crash, four more U.S. troops were killed when two helicopters collided over southern Afghanistan. On Tuesday, eight soldiers were killed when their personnel vehicles was struck by roadside bombs in the Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.
Obama has upped the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan to 68,000 troops and is considering sending a large addition next year, but fewer than the 40,000 troops requested by his commander there, U.S. officials tell The Associated Press. He holds his next war council meeting with the Joints Chiefs of Staff on Friday.
Bush once said that he felt the appropriate way to show his respect was to meet with family members in private.
The lifting of the 18-year ban on media coverage of bodies returning to Dover was done to keep the human cost of war from being shielded from the public.
Obama saw it directly.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=9178
Posted by Yanira Farray on Oct 29 2009, With 0 Reads, Filed under AfPak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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President Obama is a man such as the bushdicks could never have dreamed of being. He understands responsibility. Just because he never wore a uniform, he’s still seen war, such as in southside Chicago, up close and personal — unlike the bushdicks, who never left their multiple mansions.
What we have to do now is make it clear to him that there is no way to “win” in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and no reason to stay. Our military presence is only making things worse, especially because THEY DON’T WANT US THERE.
We need to send in engineers and construction crews to rebuild what we’ve destroyed, provide construction materials to the locals, and get out. It’s their country, their culture, their decision.
When they have food and water, and doctors and teachers, and electricity and transportation, the terrorists will dry up and disappear, because no one fights as if they have nothing to lose WHEN THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO LOSE.
It was impossible to reason with the nose-picking, cocaine-snorting, tantrum-throwing, illiterate coward drunk, because he was clinically psychotic. The only thing Chicken George knew was his own ego.
But President Obama has proven that he both knows how to learn, and knows how to lead.
If we give him the full story, and the facts to back it up, he’ll listen. He, unlike the la-la-land regimes, always has.
You don’t think this president hasn’t an ego problem? Even his swagger is worse that cowboy George. He is a sharp speaker but struggles with making a decision. I agree with alot of your imput but not the fact of what I just mentioned.
The reason Bush did not have cameras was because he felt the families deserved their privacy in their grief, he did not want to use it as a photo op. He also did not take cameras into hospitals when he visited the soldiers; he wanted it to be respectful and not profit from it, same when he had veterans to the White House.
The president has never supported the military and he isn’t now. He’s played more golf in 9 months than Bush did in 3 years, yet Bush was walloped for it. Obama goes on dates and vacations but he can’t sit down and read his generals’ reports or meet with them, while Bush met with them weekly!
Obama does things to draw attention to him, to glorify him. He gets another photo op in the middle of the night but won’t give the troops what they need, what they have asked for for 4 months! Shameful the highest number of deaths we have had in those months, the highest since the war began. NATO can make a decision and send troops, but he just lets them suffer and die!
Obama said this was the war we had to win; he said Afghanistan was the place. But when it gets hard, he backs up. That is not a way to win, but then he said winning made him uncomfortable. Who is this guy? Certainly not a commander-in-chief worth mentioning
Your refusal to acknowledge recent history is amusing.
Does ‘I want to be the war president,’ and Karl Rove’s political advice to Bush to use the war to prop up his campaign, while blacking out images of death and other negative photo ops of wars’ realities ring a bell? Did that really get by you?
Bush and his propaganda apparatus, the White House Iraq Group (ever hear of that?), lied about Iraq, lied about Afghanistan with you apparently cheerleding all along.
Bush the Junior spent 487 days on vacation during Cheney’s presidency; that amounts to one third of the two terms in office. That is a record for any US president.
As for drawing attention to himself, the sight of the AWOL Bush decked out in a flight suit in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner caught my attention…. and made me puke.
Sure. Check out the Veterans Day celebration where he clearly is the ONLY one who does not salute. You Obama jocksniffers make me ill.
He could care less about soldiers unless it furthers his political gains. And bowing to foreign leaders? Give me a break!
Do you have a link to a picture of this dastardly event?
BTW: What kind of jocksniffers do you appreciate?
In answer to Greg W:
I suggest that you go and pull up some of the real U-Tubes from Veteran’s Day, 2009, at Arlington National Cemetery.
The photo that you are describing states that it is taken at the Veteran’s Day events, 2009, at Arlington National Cemetery. If you look at that photo where he is supposedly not behaving correctly, President Obama is wearing a red tie.
Look at the genuine U-Tubes that were taken at Arlington cemetery, Veteran’s Day, 2009. The President is wearing a blue tie.
There are articles and U-Tubes available if you care to do a search about how heartfelt the President was when at Arlington and how he went above and beyond normal practices to console others., including when out of the range of the cameras.
The photo you mention is certainly NOT what it is described to be. Perhaps it is not even real.
Greg W has got it all wrong. The photo was taken as the military band was playing “Hail to the Chief”, so it would have been totally inappropriate for the President to salute himself.
Read up on it at snopes.com