The University of Tennessee's Chattanooga campus is flying flags at half-mast, but because of the governor's order only: no Federal order to honor the slain Marines and sailor in this way has been given. An acquaintance at Dover Air Force Base, where their bodies were transported today, reports that flags are at full staff there.
This didn't happen after the FT Hood shootings, when the President issued the following proclamation. The generous spirit of the mayor mentioned below notwithstanding, if this were an oversight by now someone has had time to bring it up.
A message is being sent by this silence and inaction, but what is the message? And for whom is it intended?
UPDATE: Marcus Luttrell seems to agree.
UPDATE: The President relents to the "mounting pressure" and issues the order.
4 comments:
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
I thought of that, but this isn't the first time this has come up and he's done the right thing in the past. Indeed, he's done it even for just random mass shootings as a means of calling attention to the problem as well as to honor the victims.
Normally I don't have a problem with people keeping silent instead of speaking. This is so strange and out of order, though.
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by indifference".
There. Fixed it for ya!
Seriously, there are protocols (for good reason) to keep the tradition from being devalued. If you do it for one person or make one exception to the general rule, suddenly everyone demands the same treatment and instead of being a rare mark of national respect, the tradition becomes so commonplace as to be meaningless. So like Grim, I would ordinarily be inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on this one.
But if, as Grim says, he's made other exceptions - and those exceptions are similar in nature to this incident - then that changes things for me. I haven't looked into Obama's past decisions, but I do have the impression that in his book, military folks just don't rate his valuable time or attention.
I think that's part of why people are disturbed about this. I know it is for me.
More 'Democrat virtue' in sight.
So like Grim, I would ordinarily be inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on this one.
That benefit of the doubt has been going on for quite some time, contrary to other things going on in the war front.
Post a Comment