Spring Break
Lifted ban on coffins is big step for all Americans
Joce DeWitt
Issue date: 3/6/09 Section: Forum
Remember those images in the news of American troops being brought home from Iraq in flag-draped caskets? Neither does anyone else, but that is soon to change.
In a Feb. 26 news conference, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the U.S. government will no longer ban the publication of images of a soldier's casket returning to the states and that the decision now belongs to the individual's family.
But why did this ban of coverage ever come into existence?
Many cite an incident that occurred 20 years ago after the US invaded Panama - George H.W. Bush was shown at a press conference chuckling at joke, but at the same time some viewers also saw images of the first killed Americans coming home in caskets.
The administration felt this image left the American public thinking that Bush was being insensitive to the troops' sacrifice to their country, so the ban's official purpose was to avoid invading the privacy of the troops' families.
A misconception is that journalists simply stopped taking the pictures when the ban was made, but the press actually continued capturing the scenes - Americans were just never allowed to see the pictures.
I wonder if it's worth saving the president from humiliation in exchange for making Americans aware that troops are overseas.
Some say these images don't really portray the men and women inside of them and therefore do not impact the public - I argue the contrary. Every moment that can expose the truth of war and what soldiers go through to the American people is worth capturing.
Whether people choose to believe it or not, the war is personal. As a young student in the United States, I admit that sometimes the conflict happening over in the Middle East seems too far away to take a toll on my life, but as a member of the OSU community, my fellow students and I all are affected; there are many students who are in the military and even deployed overseas fighting for our country.
In a Feb. 26 news conference, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the U.S. government will no longer ban the publication of images of a soldier's casket returning to the states and that the decision now belongs to the individual's family.
But why did this ban of coverage ever come into existence?
Many cite an incident that occurred 20 years ago after the US invaded Panama - George H.W. Bush was shown at a press conference chuckling at joke, but at the same time some viewers also saw images of the first killed Americans coming home in caskets.
The administration felt this image left the American public thinking that Bush was being insensitive to the troops' sacrifice to their country, so the ban's official purpose was to avoid invading the privacy of the troops' families.
A misconception is that journalists simply stopped taking the pictures when the ban was made, but the press actually continued capturing the scenes - Americans were just never allowed to see the pictures.
I wonder if it's worth saving the president from humiliation in exchange for making Americans aware that troops are overseas.
Some say these images don't really portray the men and women inside of them and therefore do not impact the public - I argue the contrary. Every moment that can expose the truth of war and what soldiers go through to the American people is worth capturing.
Whether people choose to believe it or not, the war is personal. As a young student in the United States, I admit that sometimes the conflict happening over in the Middle East seems too far away to take a toll on my life, but as a member of the OSU community, my fellow students and I all are affected; there are many students who are in the military and even deployed overseas fighting for our country.
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