"Someone Else’s Sacrifice"

(photo: Barry Gutierrez of The Rocky Mountain News.)

Sgt. Ryan John Baum finally got to hold his daughter Leia, born 11 days after his death last May in Iraq.

I could try to write more on this, but jurassicpork at Welcome To Pottersville (oops, this link is now dead, Jurassicpork, please repost this to your new blog if possible) writes something far more eloquent than I ever could including the title of this post which I 'borrowed'. Please read his words instead...

Update 7 August 2008

jurassicpork pulled the plug on Welcome To Pottersville last month (new digs at Welcome Back To Pottersville) which of course hosed the link. But he graciously sent me the original text of his post which I am quoting below in its entirety. Thanks, JP!

Originally, I was going to upload today pictures and videos of my grandson’s birthday party from yesterday. Then I was going to kick back and work on my novel. But this, for the moment, is more important and takes precedence.

Stan Banos at Reciprocity Failure refuses to make any partisan political statements “for respect of the subject matter at hand.” I’ll try to do the same here although I’m not going to pretend to succeed. But, still, I have to ask:

Why didn’t this picture of Sgt. Ryan John Baum lying in his coffin make the front page of the NY Times or the Washington Post instead of the back pages of the Rocky Mountain News? Baum’s widow Dana tells us that her husband desperately wanted to get out of Iraq so he could hold his daughter Leia, born 11 days after his death last May in Iraq, on his chest. The next best thing was to put her picture on him as he lie in state. So, again, why is this prize-winning photograph restricted to a few dying blogs instead of on the august pages of the NY Times or the WaPo? Well, that still wouldn’t have been humanistic as much as subversive or controversial.

We’re not supposed to be reminded that war has consequences, that it involves dead, shattered bodies and living, shattered families. This is why the coffins are not allowed to be photographed as they stream off the transports at Dover Air Force Base, why Senator Joe Biden is not even allowed to meet with and comfort the families, why Bush and Cheney never go to a funeral for a single one of them.

Why Barbara Bush’s beautiful mind can’t be allowed to contemplate ugly images such as a body bags, why the 1000th, 2000th, 3000th and 4000th deaths were just numbers and why makeshift memorials for the troops get mowed down less than a mile from the presidential retreat in Crawford, Texas.

That's why this picture never made the front page of a major newspaper and never will. We as a nation, as Frank Rich reminds us today, desperately are trying to put Iraq behind us and we never seem capable of realizing this absurdly simple fact- We can’t put it behind us without leaving 155,000 troops behind. We can afford to put behind us a war that still silently rages on from 6000 miles away.

It’s someone else’s sacrifice, so we can afford to turn away. In a nation of 300,000,000, only about 150,000 of us are in Iraq. Lacking a draft, many of us haven’t a dog in this fight and are afforded the luxury of turning our attention to things closer to home and our wallets.

We turn our attention, instead, to $4+ a gallon gas, rising food prices, our home foreclosures, rising unemployment, all worthy and serious considerations. But we need, also, to remind ourselves that Iraq and the tremendous strain and drain this little country is imposing on us is the root cause of many of these campaign issues and national ills that are assuming much more importance than the war in Iraq.

This photograph of Sgt. Baum, a picture of the infant daughter that he never lived to see poignantly and tragically sitting atop his cold chest, makes for a poor partisan political statement for either side. It’s an image so intensely personal to the Baum family, that those of us on either side should step away and let the family grieve in peace. We should be ashamed to gawk at such intensely personal pictures. It is not even synecdochal except for those other families that had suffered other losses through our involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In the vast, almost cosmic machinery of this war effort, Sgt. Baum and his simple dream of holding his infant daughter on his chest would seem insignificant and meaningless. It’s one family’s tragedy that is reflexively met with condolences and the usual bromides of selfless sacrifice and a nation’s gratitude for such sacrifice. But the human toll in even the most just and necessary of wars is often, with truth, the first casualty.

And if that’s a partisan political statement, then sue me.

JP