I don’t understand to Washington DC, as often as I did when I was younger. When I do, I stop by my father’s house. Sometimes I bring a beer, sit down, and fill him in on the latest news. I tell him about his namesake grandson, my recent misadventures, and the current state of the Republic. The next trip will be the hardest; I have to tell him that my mother and his beloved wife died in January. The conversation is one-sided, for it takes place in Grave 99, Section 3, at Arlington National Cemetery. Commander Peter Rodrick died in a plane crash off the USS Kitty Hawk in 1979.
On my 20 or so visits, I sat with him, talked with him, and watched the dead being buried. Sometimes there would be a horse-drawn casket containing a flag-draped casket of a teenager killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Then there would be the sharp, staccato sounds of soldiers firing a 21-gun salute as an officer presented the flag of a grateful nation to a mother, father, wife, son or daughter who will never be whole again. I know that was the case with my mother.
One thing that has always struck me about Arlington is the silence — even small children dragged there on summer vacation seem to understand the solemnity of the grounds. The exception is Donald Trump. I was already mad on Monday when I saw Trump turn a ceremony commemorating the third anniversary of the deaths of 13 soldiers at Abbey Gate during the horrific evacuation of Afghanistan into a tasteless stunt. Trump was scoring cheap political points against the Biden-Harris administration over the chaotic pullout from Kabul, a pullout set in motion by Trump himself, who wanted to take credit for ending the two-decade war without doing the hard work of freeing tens of thousands of soldiers and Afghan allies.
I didn’t expect much more from Trump. He has – deep breath – called John McCain a “loser” for being captured when his plane was shot out of the sky over Vietnam. He also avoided a visit to a French cemetery honoring the American dead of World War I in 2020 because it might mess up his hair, and also: “Why would I go to that cemetery? It’s full of losers.” And we will never forget how he mocked the mother of Humayun Khan, an Army captain killed by a car bomb in Iraq, for standing next to her husband Khizr at the 2016 Democratic National Convention while criticizing Trump for his anti-Islam rhetoric but not speaking himself. Khizr Khan said his wife Ghazala did not speak because she was afraid of breaking down. “Trump does not feel the pain of a mother who sacrificed her son,” Khizr Khan said.
So on Monday, I wasn’t surprised when Trump was shown wearing his goofy grin and giving a thumbs up at the grave of a fallen soldier. He looked like a damn tourist visiting Jerry Lewis’ star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was horribly inappropriate and totally in character. I did wonder, though, if it violated Arlington’s policy not to politicize America’s most sacred ground. As it turns out, I was right. The next day, NPR reported that Arlington officials and Trump campaign staffers got into a scuffle and clashed over allowing the Trump campaign to film gravesites, which is prohibited.
I was not surprised that this fiasco occurred, only the details. I lay in bed last night thinking about how it was possible that a former American president could have misunderstood the purpose of a place like Arlington. Let’s face it: thousands of people are buried there, killed in wars that proved neither just nor in the interests of the American people. (My father was killed in a training accident as his squadron prepared for a possible attack on Tehran after the hostages were taken in Iran, a direct result of the United States’ support of the Shah, a cruel and kleptocratic monarch.)
But that’s not the point. Soldiers and sailors have no choice; they all died for their country, serving a cause that their leaders told them was critical to the future of the United States. The fact that this often turned out to be false only makes their deaths all the more tragic.
Donald Trump didn’t have to drive to Arlington to shoot B-roll footage for his attack ads. He could have simply laid a wreath in memory of the 13 dead. He could have left his own camera crew in the parking lot. You see, Donald Trump had a choice. My father and the tens of thousands of dead buried here in their rock gardens didn’t have that luxury.
It should come as no surprise to any American that Trump made the wrong choice.
