Pittsburgh mourns fallen officers, America neglects fallen soldiers

It was an amazing sight.

As the funeral procession left downtown Pittsburgh and made its way to Oakland, pedestrians lined Fifth Avenue. It was a mixture of business people and doctors, students and professors, all common people who felt that they should take a moment out of the rush of the day to witness the event. The police cars came and parked on the street. With police sirens ringing intermittently in the air, the cars parked on the street until most of the lanes on Forbes and Fifth avenues were completely filled with cars.

One can have mixed feelings about cops. On the day of the service, a young gentleman at the bus stop wondered aloud why there are no funerals like this for victims of police violence. Certainly, the majority of cops perform their duties in the way they are told, but we do not have to look far for incidents of police misconduct. But one feels nothing but sympathy and sadness for these men shot and killed in the line of duty by a racist with a love for guns. However, with all those feelings alive in me, as I watched the funeral procession, I began to wonder why we are so selective about whose deaths we honor.

This past March, the war in Iraq turned six years old. As I write this, 4,273 American soldiers have lost their lives in the war. I should also mention that 318 soldiers from various other nations have also been killed. Along with the deaths of soldiers, around 655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. The war in Afghanistan has claimed 1,132 U.S. and Coalition soldiers' lives. Yet the news of these deaths is relegated to the back pages of the newspaper, if they are mentioned at all. Besides, Barack Obama won and everything is right in the world. That is, if you ignore the fact that he is postponing our exit from Iraq while simultaneously escalating the war in Afghanistan. Perhaps we had Obama wrong the whole time; maybe he does want to radically change this country. After all, everyone knows the best way to destroy an empire is to let it fight a war in Afghanistan.

Why do we hide from these ghosts? In 1991, George H. W. Bush banned the press from photographing soldier's caskets as they arrive home. This kept the public's eyes away from those flag-draped coffins. The ban allowed fallen soldiers to be whisked away in the night, buried in the shadows away from the gaze of the public. George W. Bush upheld the ban because he knew that hiding the deaths from the public's eye was necessary for ensuring support for his war.

Ignorance was indeed bliss. Over the years, many media outlets have been accused of not supporting the troops when they acknowledged soldier deaths. As for press coverage of civilian's deaths, good luck. It seems as far as America is concerned, dead Iraqi civilians are either all terrorists or at least members of an evil religion that seeks to destroy Christian America. Therefore, their deaths do not matter.

But I do not think this explains America's passive attitude about soldier and civilian deaths. Although most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, the reasons for that opposition are not uniform across all groups and people. I cannot fathom that anyone can believe that the war is about democracy or freedom or whatever the justification of the week is. But that does not mean that every American believes this war to be just another notch on America's imperialist belt, as I do. Many are uncomfortable about the war in Iraq and what has happened in that war. They are conflicted about its history, ramifications and consequences.

Many people may just want to put the war out of their minds and ignore this black hole in our history. They just go about their day and tell themselves that we brought democracy to Iraq.

I think this ambivalence and ignorance contributes to our avoidance of the true costs of the war. But soon we will have to confront the real legacy of the war. We will have to confront the 4,591 soldiers that will never come home, never to see the faces of their family and friends. We will have to confront the 655,000 Iraqi civilians who will never see their loved ones again. We will have to confront the pain and anger created by this war and felt in America, Iraq and across the whole world.

Maybe one day we will properly honor those who died and were injured in this war and seek the truth. Perhaps one day we will punish those responsible for this war.

As Richard Poplawski sits in jail awaiting trial, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz remain free. Will we one day indict these men for war crimes and give them the punishment they deserve? I hope so. Meanwhile, while we avert our eyes, Arlington is ever more compact.