Missing Body Parts at Dover Air Force Base — Displaced Emotion Misdirects Us from Focusing on the Senseless Wars We Start (and Linger in) to What Happens after Our Inexcusable Foolishness Dismembers Our Most Valued People

© 2011 Peter Free

 

10 November 2011

 

 

Respect for our war dead’s body parts should begin before they’re dead, not after

 

We should certainly treat our war dead with respect.

 

But it would be better to focus more completely on not getting them killed or injured in the first place.

 

 

Troubles at Dover Air Force Base

 

The past few days, media headlines have focused on accusations of improperly disposed of military “body parts” at Dover Air Force Base.  With people expressing shock and horror that blown up bits of our troops were not properly reunited with the rest of their remains.

 

Two days ago:

 

The Air Force admitted that the Dover mortuary misplaced a dead soldier’s ankle and another set of remains that had been stored in a plastic bag. Employees also sawed off the damaged arm bone of a Marine so he could fit in his uniform and coffin — but did not tell his family.

 

Military officials said the incidents resulted from the strain of handling thousands of dead bodies, some with gruesome injuries that made it difficult to prepare remains for burial.

 

© 2011  Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe, Air Force mishandled remains of war dead, inquiry finds, Washington Post (08 November 2011)

 

And yesterday:

 

The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill [from 2003 to 2008], a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea.

 

© 2011 Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe, Remains of war dead dumped in landfill, Washington Post (09 November 2011)

 

 

A broader perspective — displaced emotion hides societal apathy

 

I have noticed that the less we are willing to send ourselves and our own children to fight this nation’s misbegotten wars, the more we express appreciation and caring for our volunteer military’s sacrifices.

 

It is as if we can ward off the wrongness of our own cowardice, and moral misguidedness, by showering mostly meaningless verbal accolades on them.

 

The Dover scandal is an instance of this kind of displaced emotion.

 

“We” are focusing on dead body fragments, rather than on live troops.

 

Our attention seems to be almost exclusively on ceremony, rather than on “life versus death” priorities and practicalities.

 

 

“Get real” — war’s truths are always grim and unutterably sad

 

What does anyone (realistically) expect mortuary technicians to do, when confronted by bags of body parts they have no idea where to put?

 

Just how emotionally available do you want these, mostly young, people to be — as they confront the horror of America’s deadly idiocies day after day?

 

Do we really want to tell family members the truth?

 

Yeah, your loved one was blown up.

 

His body fragments cover at least five acres.

 

We couldn’t recover them all because our troops were under fire at the time.  And because three other soldiers/marines/airmen were exploded with him, we can’t tell who’s who.

 

Here’s the bag we collected.  Maybe you can share it amongst yourselves.

 

Have a nice day.

 

 

How imbecilically misfocused is American culture really going to get?

 

The horror here is War.

 

Not allegedly lackadaisical Air Force personnel trying to cope, sometimes predictably inadequately, with the inevitable products of war.

 

 

Another news story illustrates my point about misdirected national attention

 

A couple of weeks ago, Sugarland’s musical tribute to the seven dead from the wind-caused stage collapse at Indiana’s state fair last summer  got prominent media attention:

 

A packed house watched country duo Sugarland deliver an emotionally-charged free concert meant to "celebrate" healing, life and music while serving as a tribute to the victims of a deadly stage collapse last August at the Indiana State Fair.

 

Singer Jennifer Nettles told Friday night's crowd – including some of those injured during the collapse – that the tragedy had changed them all.

 

© 2011 Rick Callahan, Sugarland Returns To Indianapolis For Concert After Stage Collapse, Huffington Post (29 October 2011)

 

Of course, no one said a word about people routinely donating their lives and/or body parts in Afghanistan.

 

On the one hand, we have people going to an amusement and being killed or injured there by an act of God.  On the other, we have military people volunteering to put their lives in the line of bullets and bombs in order to serve their country.

 

Which sacrifice deserves more attention from people outside the immediately affected families?

 

And which group actually gets it?

 

 

The moral? — Looking the wrong way all the time will keep us on a dying spiral

 

The United States seems to have become a culture with a penchant for thoughtlessly focusing on the wrong things, to the exclusion of the right.

 

We’ve mostly lost our minds and are running around like hysterical children causing no end of trouble for the Common Sense that should be trying to burst through our front door.

 

If we are really concerned about honoring our war dead, let’s concentrate more on sacrificing them only when absolutely and unavoidably necessary.

 

Respect in death, yes.  Respect and intelligent deployment before death, still more.