The Dangers of Yellow Ribbon Patriotism: Joe Klein, TIME Magazine

By Joe Klein
Time Magazine
Aug. 29, 2005

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Around the time that the forlorn gold star mother Cindy Sheehan began
her vigil outside the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, I had
dinner with a military officer who had commanded a battalion in Iraq.

"I lost five lieutenants in a year," he told me. "I collected body
parts. I don't know how I'll ever get over that. And you just get the
feeling that the rest of the country doesn't understand. They're not
part of this. It's peacetime in America, and a few of us are at war."

We have had a long season of sunshine patriotism in the U.S. since the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We love our troops without
qualification, and rightly so. They have fought with courage and
restraint in a horrifying chaos of battle. The yellow ribbons and
support our troops signs are heartfelt. But there is a growing sense
this summer that mere patriotic displays just won't cut it anymore.

The military is frustrated by both the mission and the sense that the
war isn't front and center for the rest of the country. There is a fair
amount of anger among the returning troops, especially the noncareer
soldiers, the National Guard and reservists whose tours were extended
and then extended again. In a harrowing and exquisite new book, The
Last True Story I'll Ever Tell (Penguin; 240 pages), a Florida National
Guardsman named John Crawford writes about coming home from Iraq,
"Every time I saw someone sitting contentedly inside a coffee shop or
restaurant, I wanted to yell at them to wake them up."

The U.S. Army Europe last week invited me to attend a conference for
senior officers in Stuttgart, Germany. Many of the officers had
recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan; others were about to be
deployed. As always, I was struck by how the core values of the
military-service and discipline, both physical and intellectual-are
so different from the perpetual American Mardi Gras. More than a few
officers told me they were concerned by what was happening back home.

They sensed that public support for the war was waning and feared that
once again they had been sent into a difficult situation with less than
a total commitment from the country's political leaders, including the
Commander in Chief. They echoed a question that the battalion commander
who had lost five of his lieutenants had asked me. "Why hasn't the
President issued a national call to service? I don't mean a draft," he
said. "But if the President called on people to serve, they would. And
not just in the military. My mother mentioned this the other day: 'Why
aren't there the war-bond drives we had in World War II? Why aren't we
being asked to collect clothing for the children of Iraq?'"

Other officers wondered why the American public was never asked to
share in their grief, why the President never attended the funerals of
the fallen. One general, who had presided over 162 memorial services in
Iraq, told me how it worked: "There's no coffin, just the inverted
rifle, boots and helmet of the fallen. We call the roll, up to the name
of the missing trooper. We call his name: Specialist Doe.

Then a second time: Specialist John Doe. A third time: Specialist John
R. Doe. And then taps is played. It really gets to you. It's an
important emotional experience for the troops. It closes the door and
enables you to move on."

We are told that George W. Bush often cries in private meetings with
the families of the fallen. No doubt the President feels the intense
pain and responsibility of having sent young people off to war.







Perhaps he feels the pain more intensely than other Presidents, knowing
that the real war in Iraq, the one that began after he proclaimed that
"major combat operations are over," was not anticipated by his
Administration, a colossal failure of planning and execution. It is
also possible that there is more than crude political calculation to
the President's failure to attend funerals; his refusal to intrude upon
the private grief of the families has presidential precedent. But the
inability to acknowledge these terrible losses leaves an aching void in
the rest of us. It isolates the general public from the suffering that
is a dominant reality of life in military communities.

And that is why the awkward anguish of Cindy Sheehan has struck a
chord, despite her naive politics and the ideology of some of her
supporters. She represents all the tears not shed when the coffins came
home without public notice. She is pain made manifest. It is only with
a public acknowledgment of the unutterable agony this war has caused
that we can begin a serious and long overdue conversation about Iraq,
about why this war-which, unlike Vietnam, cannot be abandoned without
serious consequences-is still worth fighting and why we should
recommit the entire nation to the struggle. This is a failure of
leadership, perhaps the signal failure of the Bush presidency.

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So why aren't those pro- war hypocrites facing the reality of war?

Too busy getting drunk, screaming at liberals, sitting on their fat
butts listening to hate radio, and shopping at WAl-Mart?

Liberals are ready to help the troops -- why aren't Bush's people?

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