Last week, President George W. Bush kicked off his re-election campaign with advertisements featuring flag-draped coffins being dragged out of the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.
Aside from being shamelessly exploitative of the tragedy of Sept. 11, the ads point out a glaring hypocrisy in Bush's "War on Terror."
Since the beginning of combat in Afghanistan in October 2001, the Bush administration has strictly forbidden media access to the hundreds of coffins coming back from either Afghanistan or Iraq containing the bodies of American soldiers.
More than 550 coffins from Iraq have been flown into the United States, along with over 100 from Afghanistan. But the American public hasn't seen a single one.
During the Vietnam War, one of the many things that turned public opinion against the war was the constant images of American soldiers returning in boxes - a piece of history the Bush administration is clearly well aware of.
The cost of the war is mounting - it now costs $2.5 billion per week to occupy Iraq - and the casualty count is rising as well, with little progress to show for it. The tide of public opinion is quickly turning against Bush and his execution of the war, and with an election fast approaching, the last thing Bush needs is for people to see coffins and mourning families.
So, Americans have not seen a single coffin returning from overseas, casualties of Bush's "War on Terror." To many people in this country, 650 is just a number.
Yet Bush has no problem trotting the bodies of firefighters killed on Sept. 11 in front of the public, asking them to focus on one tragedy while ignoring the tragedies happening nearly every day because of Bush's poorly planned, illegal invasion.
Aside from being a disgusting bit of irony, it reflects the larger contradiction in the "War on Terror."
The purpose of color-coded alerts, talk of an "axis of evil," travel warnings and other scare tactics is to create an atmosphere of fear in America - we should all be scared of terrorist attacks. This strategy was underscored in Bush's recent commercials featuring the Sept. 11 wreckage.
Bush clearly wants to portray himself as the country's protector in a world of constant danger. But while we are to accept this reality, we must ignore another - that Bush is failing to protect us and is creating the same type of carnage and death we saw on Sept. 11.
While we've wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives dismantling
Saddam Hussein's regime - which actually had nothing to do with the destroyed towers featured in Bush's commercials - Osama bin Laden, the real culprit, remains free.
A lot of people died on Sept. 11, but what has Bush done besides add to the body count? The "War on Terror" started the morning of Sept. 11, and all Bush has done since is add over 650 Americans and thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans to the casualty list.
We're not any safer now then we were on Sept. 11. Our arrogant invasions have done little but to further inflame potential terrorists.
So while we have to believe we are in danger all the time, never forgetting what happened on Sept. 11, Bush asks us at the same time ignore the danger he has put us in. He wants us to forget the month where every day was Sept. 11 for the residents of Baghdad during our "Shock and Awe" campaign.
He wants us to see the coffins of Sept. 11, but ignore the ones coming out of Iraq.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
