Why We Don't Mourn

The most striking image in the tragic death of Italian security agent Nicola Calipari, killed by U.S. troops on the road to the airport with freed hostage/journalist Giuliana Sgrena, is simple and striking: national mourning. Americans avoid it. Our leaders avoid it. Our trained seal national media avoids it. Have you paused to watch a national prayer service for our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two bloody years? No, because it hasn't happened. Do you recall that national day of mourning for the 1,500 killed in the Iraq incursion? No, because President Bush has never named one. Yeah, we have local stories about "our heroes" killed in Fallujah, Baghdad, and Mosul - local funerals, local ceremonies of grief, local newspaper stories about the high school athlete or the volunteer fireman who went to war and never came home. Nothing national. Nothing American. All of Italy is mourning Calipari's death. His body is lying in state at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Rome, where visitors have been paying their respects, and a state funeral was planned for Monday. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said he would award Calipari, a married father of two, the gold medal of valor for his heroism. In war zones, horrendous mistakes among jittery, scared, and heavily-armed troops will always lead to mistaken death and injury. It is part of the cost of war that our society has decided to accept, following the path laid out by our national leadership. What we don't have to accept is the national silence that greets the dead from an administration that doesn't want photographs taken of the coffins arriving Stateside. Why don't we mourn as a nation? The reason is simple and shocking and damning: because our leaders don't care.

Comments

[chervokas]

Really it's a combo of culture and propaganda. The US population just never mourns for the death of foreigners, especially at US hands, whatever the situation (where was the mourning for the people in that cable car you died when then hot shot asshole pilot flew under the cable and sliced it?).

Second, the administration has decided not to let people see flag drapped coffins of US servicemen coming home. Its a PR decision not to mourn publicly. And it seems, politically at least, to be working.

[Tom K]

Tom:

You confidence in the goverment's ability to affect the behavior of the average person when it comes to intimate things like mourning is unjustified, in my view.

If most Americans don't mourn, it's because most Americans don't care in the sense of caring that would trigger mourning. The government could try to whip up concern, but could neither supress it nor make it happen contrary to the popular will.

How much mourning was done for WWII vets during that war, or any war of the 20th Century? The people mourned Reagan because they liked him and he was perceived to be successful; the absurd media frenzy sprang from that, not the other way around.

[Pamela]

You are forgetting the declared "national day of mourning" for Ronald Reagan after his death. Post offices closed, flags at half staff, etc. Still, you have a point. After talking to hubby Michael about such things, I've been jealous of the shared national sense that spurs Britons to observe moments of silence for solemn occasions.

[Anon]

We don't mourn because it's a collective activity, and that doesn't fit in with the individualist ethic that is America.

You are allowed to pay your respects to individuals that have died, if you want to, but it's not required - it's your choice.

The last act of U.S. national mourning was JFK's funeral - a tragedy. Reagan's day of mourning was a farce.

[Grant]

You read my mind, Tom. I happened to be in Italy when the country was mourning the loss of 19 soldiers and Carabinieri officers who died in a truck bombing in Iraq in November 2003. The entire nation literally ground to a halt for a day, and everyone had tears in their eyes. It was both an official recognition of the tragedy and a heartfelt moment of empathy/sympathy from the populace. I'll never forget it.

[virgo]

I take issue only with your last sentence. Whether our leaders care or not is beside the larger point: Our leaders don't want the possible incendiary fallout from the mass expression of authentic grief. (Unless of course, they can use it to their own means, ala 9/11)

Until they next need to tap into our rage and grief, they want us to stay anesthetized and compliant. Our emotions are to be channeled through the appropriate and safely abstract channels.

[hawkseye]

Most of what you say is true. However, mourning for Ronald Reagan went on and on and on. Was it for a month?

[nihil obstet]

Nightline's decision to read the names of the dead on the first anniversary of the invasion was "controversial", and widely seen as a criticism of the administration.

[mister serious]

We don't mourn.

We exploit.

[Kit Stolz]

Well put, but there are exceptions to this rule of grim silence. After the murder of a liberal mayor and a gay city councilman back in San Francisco in l979 (I think it was) by a rightwinger, their coffins were displayed in City Hall, and citizens by the thousands lined up to pay their respects.

[Tom K]

Come on now, describing Councilman Milk's murderer simply as a "right winger" is a bit like calling Lee Harvey Oswald a "left winger". Hardly conducive to reasoned discourse.

[Chip Culpepper]

You guys are so transparent. I wish I could see out of my windows as clearly I as I can see through you. The death of this Italian is tragic to say the least, but you are not looking for a national day of morning for American soldiers lost in combat. You want to take an unfortunate international incident and frame so America looks bad. I know it, you know it and most Americans know it, which is why Bush is president for another 4 years. Please keep it up.

[Culpepper joins the army]

Culpepper,

I see through you, and you have no clothes. American's killed him, so American's look bad.

You know "reality", get in touch with it.

[Andrew M]

What a load of horse manure. The Italians are making a big deal out of this tragic death as a means of making a political statement. The journalist is an avowed communist previously outspoken in her total contempt for the US action in Iraq; in addition, she had written favorably of the Saddam Hussein regime in the years prior to the start of hostilities. With each passing hour, her story about the incident becomes less believable. The government's actions relative to the death of our soldiers in Iraq is fundamentally indistinguishable from practices in virtually all previous wars in which the US has been involved. The very obvious point of your silly rant is NOT to express concern over our soldiers, but rather to make of the Italian story another bludgeon against the government's Iraqi action.

[Athena]

Anyone who has spent time in Europe knows they have a deeper connection to shared ritual than we do. Why is that? Spirituality versus religiosity? I don't have an answer, but it's worth thinking about. We are surely poorer in this regard.

On a related subject, just this morning I was wondering why "sorry" seems so difficult for us. Perhaps I missed it, but in all the formal statements I have seen about this death and this wounding, the official presidential word has been "regret", not "sorry"...not "apology."

[Tom K]

I must say, the most disturbing thing about this story (apart, of course, from the human tragedy) is the fact that otherwise sane people in Italy appear open to the notion that US forces tried to kill this woman, or her Italian escort, in retaliation for Italy pursuing a course of negotiation that we do not favor.

I know the europeans are generally opposed to the war, even in counties whose goverments support it, but are there really many people over there with that negative a view of the US? I mean, opposing our policy does not require a belief that we would sanction murder of citizens and armed personnel of an allied country.

[Gayle]

Every now and again CNN international will broadcast British caskets coming home from Iraq. The effect is both powerful and respectful.

We disrespect our dead by ignoring them. And I don't just blame this administration for this. Despite the bans, our press can and should do more coverage. Disgusting how we treat our war dead!!!

[Ben]

It's just another example of our disconnection from reality, and I do not necessarily disinclude myself.

We mourned Reagan, as a nation, because of the perception of what he was, not the reality. We ignore the things that do not match our perception.

The administration is all too ready to exploit this, and the press is aiding and abetting, but we cannot simply point our fingers elsewhere.

We have deadened our hearts & minds.

[tom matrullo]

It's not just a difference in temperament or Europe/US, it's a discontinuity between lands that have homogeneous culture (most Latin American countries in this hemisphere, e.g.,) and a land that has sought to replace indigenous forms of societal relations with something more like legal contracts. It's got its plusses and minuses. We get corporate, soulless dirges for nobodies like Reagan, and the people suffer in neglected silence. It's unhealthy. Plus, we reserve our special sharpshooting competence for those who could be cultural leaders, just to make sure we don't have any.

[cannante]

let me add an observation:

anyone who spends time with italians in a car knows how they drive.

they saw the flashing lights, and were doing what italians always do... drive as fast as possible to be able to slow down at the very last minute and stop on a dime.

considering they had just picked up a hostage who was threatened with death probably had something to do with nerves.

no conjecture is going to be correct about what exactly happened. but if i read the landscape well, this brings italy out of the coalition in 6 months.

[Anna Feruglio Dal Dan]

Well, yes, people in Italy do believe Americans would "sanction murder of citizens and armed personnel of an allied country." Remember, the fact itself that the USA has the death penalty is creepy to Europeans. And if you add in Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition... And the bombing of the Serbian TV building and the Al-Jazeera site in Afghanistan. And killing civilians with abandon is exactly what's been going on in Iraq all along.

I don't think it was deliberate murder in this case, but just because there are lots of other incidents of passers-by - mostly Iraqis - getting themselves killed in the same way (Iraqis are bad drivers as well, I guess). Not because I don't believe the American military would not do murder if it thought it was in the national interest.

And as for grieving, the "spirituality" of Europe (that's the first time I hear Europe being accused of being spiritual!) doesn't come into it. Americans can grieve collectively all right, what do you call the reaction to 9/11? It's just that you can't mourn lives lost and insist on how precious they are without leading people to wonder if it was worth it after all.

[ABS]

lack of mourning is not the only manifestation of the disconnect between policy and its consequences in america. our inability to connect ridiculously low educational achievement to a lack of investment in public education; to connect the fact that there are 40 million plus people without health insurance - half of them middle class Americans -- to a lack of national commitment to solving the health care problem; to connect the homeless people we walk by on the street to our mental health, housing, and welfare policies.

americans defy physics. the numbness that afflicts us seems to defy the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

[tmcotter]

Re Cannante: Anyone who spends time with the Irish know how they drink... What baloney, and weren't the Italians part of the grand coalition. I more than half buy the fear that since the journa was ransomed by the lily livered Itays, so what if...

[Tom W.]

To the Chipster above - hell yes, I'm looking for a national day or mourning and respect for soldiers killed in action. Explicit, direct, like after 9/11. Not so America "looks bad" schmuck, so America can look inward, and look better.

[RubDMC]

Beautiful piece, Tom.

You're right - our 'leaders' simply don't want us to dwell on the reality of what they're doing, so they obfuscate and dissemble and overtly block our right to see, as in the case of the Dover AFB photos

As Rhummy says, "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

He might also add, "Out of sight, out of mind."

But mourning and grieving are essential to our own, as well as to our collective, health. Without it, we will soon get to the point where our heads explode.

Peace, and Witness/Mourn Every Day