The photo of the dog laying next to his dead owner’s casket that everyone’s posting on Facebook doesn’t make me say, “Awww.”
It makes me mad.
I’m angry that 35-year-old Navy Seal Jon Tumilson was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6, and that his beloved Labrador retriever, Hawkeye, was deprived of his master, his best friend, for no reason.
Tumilson was one of at least 30 killed when a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Afghan “insurgents” took out their Chinook helicopter. Hawkeye lay at the foot of Tumilson’s casket throughout his funeral, held last Friday in Rockford, Iowa, and was photographed by Tumilson’s cousin, Lisa Pembleton.
I’m not saying Mr. Tumilson died in vain. It’s not my place to judge. From what I read, he always dreamed of joining the military and is considered a hero. But things could have been different. They could have been better for the man and his canine companion and those who loved them.
Friday, October 7, will mark ten years since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. Since then, 1,721 Americans have lost their lives – and thousands of innocent Afghan civilians have also been killed, although you never hear about them or how their loved ones are suffering – and we’ve spent almost $460 billion on this conflict.
Imagine how much $460 billion could buy here at home – how many teachers could keep their jobs, how many community centers could stay open and hungry children could be fed and bridges could be repaired and mental health clinics could fend off closure. Although Republican politicians would surely still want to destroy the economy for political gain and kick Obama out of the White House, imagine how many lives would be made easier, a little better, if we weren’t spending so much to kill brown and black and white people for no reason 7,411 miles away.
Why are we in Afghanistan again?
And why the excessive use of the word “insurgent” these days, by the way? The word originally referred to someone who revolts against government or civil authority. Was it co-opted by pro-war flacks in some conference room in Bethesda or Langley or Washington to make it more palatable, more acceptable, to kill people in other countries by stripping them of their humanity?
It’s good, I guess, that people are posting these photos and keeping us aware of the folly in Afghanistan. But maybe we should all take another second to communicate to our congressional representatives and the president how wrong this costly, needless, endless war is. It would be cool if we all did a little more than just repost a poignant photo on a social networking website and move on with our lives.
The ones we still have.
Unlike Jon and Hawkeye.
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