The Defense Department will reportedly announce today that it is lifting the ban on news photographs of the returning of war dead to the U.S. Rather than hash the issue over again, here’s a column I wrote in 2006 about why this is a good idea.
As the HBO movie Taking Chance (based on a true story) demonstrated this month, chronicling the return of war dead does not inherently serve any agenda. But it does serve our awareness of the sacrifice war entails.