Ban on release of photos: Is it political?

By MARY SANCHEZ
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
A flag-draped coffin elicits one immediate response: respect.
So last week's uproar over photos mistakenly released by the Pentagon is puzzling.
The government doesn't want Americans to view the coffins of deceased members of the military arriving from Iraq?
What about the country's right -- even the necessity -- to grieve for these dead military personnel?
But the Pentagon says the photos were released by mistake.
There will be no more photos.
A Freedom of Information Act request by a Tucson man began the controversy. The man requested the photos for his Web site -- www.thememoryhole.org. He asked for any photos of coffins arriving from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
The Air Force released the photos. They were posted to the Internet, and the trouble began.
News organizations quickly began downloading the images for publication.
And the Pentagon just as quickly said there would be no more photos released.
President Bush, through a spokesman, issued this opinion:
"We must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitivity of the families of the fallen. And that is what the policy is based on, and that has to be the utmost concern."
Not much to see
These are not gory images. They are closed coffins, carefully shrouded in crisp American flags. Viewers of the photos cannot determine whose body lies inside.
No grieving family members are present for the camera lens to exploit. The only people in the photos are other members of the military, solemnly carrying the coffins or offering salutes of honor.
The Pentagon has further argued that photographs of graveside services of individual soldiers provide a more appropriate source of public images of fallen military men and women.
The idea is the public needs to see the cemetery in the photo to give proper context.
Yes, some incredibly moving portraits of funerals for deceased troops have been taken at cemeteries.
Seeing a widowed spouse at graveside, or a child watching a parent's coffin lowered into a grave, gives a painful image of the human costs of war.
But viewing row after row of symmetrical flag-draped coffins raises the visual stakes.
Controlling backlash
Bush critics quickly argued the real reason behind the ban is the administration's quest to control public backlash against the war.
They are likely correct.
Images of a family grieving at graveside are powerful. But the sight of lines of coffins, as the photos show, raises questions about why all of these people are dying.
It's a politically relevant and loaded question this close to a presidential election.
And yet, even this very valid criticism should not be the first issue considered.
Bush is right to argue the individual's death is the utmost concern.
But his argument stops before it reaches the crucial point -- what should the public response be to the death?
Grief, sorrow and reflection that a soul has passed, this is the answer.
Debates about weapons of mass destruction, striking a country unilaterally, attempts to instill democracy where none existed before -- all of these issues should be considered and the answers carried to the polls in November.
Yet a person's political or philosophical support or opposition to the war cannot change the fact that these lives are already gone.
The dead troops deserve any chance to have a public genuflection to their lives.
Manipulating grief is a dangerous business.
Great care should always be taken with death. But the care cannot go so far that it denies death's numerous claims.
Part of what this country must grapple with and grieve is the sheer number of casualties in Iraq.
And while portraits at a soldier's graveside help us in that regard, those images don't form a complete picture.
A phrase exists for this time in America: last respects.
These military men and women deserve last respects.
XMary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.