Photo-op at Arlington National Cemetery

It must have seemed so clever for the campaign:

Photograph Trump with the family of some of the victims of the Afghanistan suicide bombing.

Trump campaign advisor Corey Lewandowski put out the first photo, in a tweet:

There were lots of thumbs-up gestures. It was a campaign event with great visuals and a simple message: The withdrawal from Afghanistan should have gone better. American soldiers got killed. It's Biden's fault. If only Trump had been president, things might have gone better. Elect Trump. Smile.

It wasn't a good venue for a campaign event.

Joe Yetter is a retired Army physician. He was a Democratic candidate for Congress for Oregon's 2nd Congressional District in 2022. He wrote to share his reaction to the photo-op.

Joe Yetter

Guest Post by Joe Yetter

Jane Collins’ excellent guest blog published yesterday, "Trump Holds you in Contempt," struck a chord with me because Trump has exhibited contempt for so many people, groups, and values I hold dear. In particular, his recent attempt to use Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign ad was insulting to all Americans who cherish the place and the people who are buried there.  

This insult is personal to me. Here’s why:                                 

My parents took my brother and me to Arlington National Cemetery when I was about four or five years old. It’s one of my earliest clear memories: the cadence of boots, the slap of hands on rifles at the changing of the guard, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier looming high over my head, the silent endless rows of marble headstones, the green, green grass.

The sound of Taps.

I was too young to comprehend it fully, but I did know that other kids’ dads lay beneath the grass, while my own dad had returned alive from a war, and he had his hand on my shoulder right now, and my mom was choked up and crying, holding my baby brother. 

Young Joe Yetter III, with his father, Joe Yetter Jr.

Eisenhower was president. Dad always believed that Ike was partly the reason he was still alive, though Dad had nearly died in the Battle of the Bulge. His dad, my grandpa, had been gassed and wounded in the trenches of WW I, and he carried German mortar fragments and Belgian surgical steel for the rest of his life. But Grandpa was still above the grass, too.

I was an Army brat. I was imbued with military traditions of courage, honesty, and integrity. I was smart enough to know that not every soldier was honest or courageous, but I was idealistic enough to believe that every one of them who was not those things must be deeply, deeply shamed. Long before I knew about the West Point Honor Code, I knew its value: a cadet, a soldier, even an Army brat, must never lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Honor, fidelity, and the ability to feel shame have partly disappeared in the civilian world; they remain strong in the military.

My dad swore me in: September 5, 1968, Lyndon Johnson was president, and the Vietnam War was raging. During the next eight years of medical school, internship, and residency, I would care for wounded soldiers from that war and veterans from earlier wars (in one case, going all the way back to the Spanish-American War), and I listened to their stories. I never saw combat in over 35 years in uniform, but I did come to understand, just a tiny bit, the courage, honor, and sacrifice of those veterans and their comrades. I saw their wounds, their burns, their amputations, and—when we failed—their lifeless bodies.

My son and I lived in Belgium from 1993-1995. He was fourteen when we drove over to the American Cemetery in Luxembourg. On the way, I told him that his grandfather had fought in the Battle of the Bulge, that some of my dad’s comrades were among the thousands buried there. I didn’t think my words had any more effect on my son than most words have on young teens. We parked near the entrance, walked in, and strolled about, separately. About a half hour later, I found my son, staring at the endless rows of crosses and occasional Stars of David, tears streaming down his face. “They were so young,” my fourteen-year-old son said of the soldiers who had ceased to be, a half-century before. And he wept some more. So I wept too, and I weep now, as I recall that day, that white marble, that green grass.

We remember. We honor the dead for their sacrifice. In honoring the dead, we honor the living, too, because they put their lives on hold, say farewell to their families to rise before dawn, ruck impossible loads, sail off on hazardous seas, fly into flak, parachute behind enemy lines, wear blue to keep the peace where peace is most unwelcome, eat MREs or K-rations or C-rations or lowest-bidder-tainted beef, write their letters home, await mail call, await incoming mortars and sniper fire, await Taps at night.

Await Taps.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]