Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers was only 30 years old when he died in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He was thousands of miles from his home in Hopewell, Virginia when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) wounded and killed him. But as fate would have it, his death and return to his family in the United States has become front page news.
The return of the remains of Sgt. Myers to Dover Air Force base in Dover, Delaware late Sunday night was the first time the media had been allowed to record the return of a fallen member of the military to the U.S. in 18 years. During the senior Bush presidency in 1991, a policy was put in place to forbid photographing the coffins of war dead. But as of April 6, the Pentagon reversed the policy to allow media access to photograph and videotape what is called the “dignified transfer” of fallen service members who died in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The change in policy represents something more than greater media access. To allow the press to record the return of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is to bring two wars, both years in the making and with no end in sight, to the forefront of the American consciousness. There is no pretending what the image of a flag-draped coffin represents. There is simple, blunt and instantaneous recognition in the 2 seconds it takes to look at a photograph or video of something like that. And in that image is the gravity of knowing that a life has been lost. A son, a friend.
By granting the media access to record the return of war dead (with the consent of next of kin on a case-by-case basis), a door has been opened for the media to tell another side to the story that is the “war on terror”. What’s behind that door is anybody’s guess–anger, frustration, sadness–there is no way to know for sure. But at least now there will be a more complete picture of what the human cost of two wars looks like.