EDITORIAL OBSERVER
What World War I's Greatest Poet Would Say About Hiding Our War Dead
By ADAM COHEN
Published: November 9, 2003
When World War I broke out, the English saw going off to battle as a fine thing to do. They embraced the Latin poet Horace's dictum, "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori" — It is sweet and proper to die for one's country. But four years later, that romantic notion had been shattered by the grim reality of the mustard-gas-laced killing fields, and by the bitter words of Wilfred Owen, a British officer now recognized as the greatest poet of the Great War. Owen's subject was, he declared, "war, and the pity of war." He expressed it through dark word portraits, in which dead and dying young men were stripped of any glory or sentimentality. Owen himself became one of these inglorious casualties when he was killed in action at the age of 25, just days before the war's end, 85 years ago this week.
A revered figure in England, Owen found a large American following during the Vietnam War. He is often portrayed as antiwar, which he was not. What he stood for was seeing war clearly, which makes him especially relevant today. The Bush administration has been loudly attacking the news media for misreporting the Iraq conflict by leaving out good news. Owen would counter — in vivid, gripping images — that it is the White House, with its campaign to hide casualties from view, that is dangerously distorting reality.
Owen, who was commended posthumously for inflicting "considerable losses on the enemy," was no pacifist. He told his mother he had a dual mission: to lead his men "as well as an officer can" but also to watch their "sufferings that I may speak of them." Owen was right that an honorable approach to war requires both ably leading troops on the battlefield, and reporting honestly what occurs there.
The Bush administration, however, is resisting this honorable approach. In its eagerness to convince the public that things are going well in Iraq, it is leading troops into battle, while trying its best to obscure what happens to them. President Bush is not attending soldier funerals, as previous presidents have, avoiding a television image that could sow doubts in viewers' minds. He avoids mentioning the American dead — and the injured, who are seven times as numerous. The Pentagon has sent out emphatic reminders that television and photographic coverage is not allowed of coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base.
Americans are already considering the relative merits of staying the course in Iraq, putting in an international peacekeeping force, and even pulling out. It is a somber debate, with great consequences for this nation, and the world. We must enter into it with full information, without lapsing into what Owen trenchantly called "the old lie" — or new ones.
posted by Richard at
Sunday, November 09, 2003
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