I have read, and yes, with a fair amount of glee, how Mr. Obama has been making a list and checking it twice of which of the Bush Administration’s many little Executive action items he  will almost instantly reverse upon taking his oath of office.  I applaud this instant change.

And I know many of those items of change will be of huge and lasting import.  But there is one tiny thing, one small change I’d like changed in that twinkling of his eye.  It is something that did not begin with Bush, to be honest, but in Clinton’s term in office: the prohibition of photographs of American military caskets coming home.

I know, in the great scheme of things, this must seem so small and petty.  But to me, sometimes the tiniest movements make the biggest change.  This prohibition enabled Americans to smilingly shop and live thoughtlessly while over 5400 Americans and Coalition troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan; while their families wept and learned to live without them.  It allowed George Bush to sweep a disastrous failure of a war under a convenient carpet of distraction and distortion.

Please, President-Elect Obama.  Let America see her dead come home on the evening news again.  Let living rooms fall silent for even that tiny space of time; let that oh-so-temporary thought be loosed in the world for “Those poor boys, their mamas must be crying.”  or “Look, what it costs us….what did it gain?” fly to the heavens above us.

The national anthem speaks of the star-spangled banners and “long may they wave” with every singing.  Those star-spangled banners top the caskets of our military dead—-and they are hidden.  It is a nation’s shame that we hide the men and women who died for the deeds of our government, to keep us in compliant silent night. End the shame, end the silence.

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