What the hell is it about this blog that if you say anything even remotely against Obama you must hate him and be a war mongering republican.

@Not The Red Baron: This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the media and the rest of America who can't handle seeing coffins. Do you think America is able to handle this?

As far as fewer deaths, I would like to think so since the death toll has been going down. Of course if it does go up then Obama is in even more trouble because then you will have people saying that he is messing things up in the middle east. After all he did say he was going to pull our troops out of Iraq and people assumed it would be with in the first few days of office (not me).

@gobblegirl: Everything the President does is about PR, especially since everything he does is watched so carefully.

maybe people don't understand but doing something like this will only make everything he does in the middle east look far worse then it is.

Listen I want Obama to get reelected however doing something like this can hurt his chances.

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I'm always amused by people who think they are smarter and more capable of "handling" harsh reality than the general public. A lot of people run around making statements like that. It's funny. It's also funny that you prefer to handle (what you deem) the ignorance of the general public by sheltering them and denying further education.

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Stop making stuff up. You clearly are having a discussion with someone who isn't here.

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During Vietnam, of course, the opposite happened. But I don't buy the idea that it was these images that turned people against the war; it was a long and protracted conflict that was bound to cause angst no matter what.

But, you know what? I really don't care one way or another if this makes people less likely to support wars. We SHOULD see the real cost of war, and we should be reluctant to wage war if we can. So if Obama really was taking a political risk here, well, good for him. Who the fuck cares if it's a political mistake? It's the right thing to do in an open and democratic society, and it will make it politically more difficult for future presidents to reverse this executive order.



By the way -- I can't believe no one has corrected this yet -- since when is Obama increasing the number of troops in Iraq? He set a deadline for withdrawal. And yeah, there's a significant number of troops left over for training, but he said unequivocally that even they will be out by 2011. What he's doing is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan.

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It's not that. It's that this move is politically straightforward. It's returning some honesty to the public at a time when they're unsure of the last time a federal administration was EVER honest with them.

Sure, it opens Obama up to risk, but to be honest, without the possibility of risk, honesty itself becomes a useless and silly thing. If you tell the truth with nothing to lose, it has no moral value.

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Canadian soldiers die too. And we see coffins and grieving relatives on television. And it's honest. I wouldn't mind if one of my relatives was there because it's the reality of what happened to their life, and I'd want people to understand that reality.

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It will always be a sad thing when someone is killed. But when that person is killed because they were fighting as a representative of their country , the regular citizens of that country have a right-and a responsibility-to see the consequences of that fight. Of course, we all hope that media coverage of the event will be respectful of the soldier and their loved ones, but like it or not it is a public event and we should all be made aware of it.

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This sentence makes all of the difference. While I agree with your premise that this tragedy may be dealt with inappropriately by the media, the family did knowingly authorize it. Barring some sort of direction from Staff Sgt. Meyers prior to his death, the decision to show his casket should fall on the surviving family.

It's pretty obvious that I don't agree with every decision that President Obama has made since he's been in office, but I think he was right on the mark with this one. This is the family's decision to make. Even if I didn't agree, I would give the President a lot of room to err in this case, because I know that he didn't reverse the ban without great forethought. This may be the hardest part of the job and I don't think that any of us have a clue how it feels to order our brave young men and women into harms way and then have to view a photo like this.

@Lincolnsbeard33: The Pope is right: you are an idiot.

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Don't assume that everyone who disagrees with you doesn't have a stake in this. My cousin just got news that he's getting redeployed to Afghanistan.

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