The Politics of Mourning
Why did we lower flags to half-mast for students and faculty killed in the Virginia Tech shootings but do not do the same for our fallen soldiers in the Middle East? That's the provocative question posed by Sgt. Jim Wilt from his Army outpost near Kabul, Afghanistan.Why did we lower flags to half-mast for students and faculty killed in the Virginia Tech shootings but do not do the same for our fallen soldiers in the Middle East? That’s the provocative question posed by Sgt. Jim Wilt from his Army outpost near Kabul, Afghanistan.
Your support matters…AP via Yahoo! News:
In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades’ deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen, lacking the “shock factor” to be honored by the Stars and Stripes as the deaths at Virginia Tech were.
“I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member,” Wilt wrote.
He noted that Bagram obeyed President Bush’s order last week that all U.S. flags at federal locations be flown at half-staff through April 22 to honor 32 people killed at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student gunman who then killed himself.
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