President Bush and the Families of the Fallen

On this Veteran's Day there's a piece in the NY Times about the frequent meetings President Bush has had with families of fallen soldiers:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — Late one night last year, while her husband was an Army scout in Iraq, Melissa Storey sat in the quiet of her bedroom to write President Bush a letter. She wanted him to know “we believed in him.” And after Staff Sgt. Clint Storey, 30, was killed by a roadside bomb, his widow put pen to paper again.

Bill Adams, who lost his son, pictured at right, has not been asked to meet with President Bush. A top aide to Mr. Bush called Mr. Adams, who has been leading war protests in Lancaster, Pa.

“I felt like I needed to let him know I don’t hate him because my husband is dead,” Mrs. Storey said, “that I don’t blame him for Clint dying over there.”

The correspondence did not go unnoticed. In May, Mrs. Storey received a surprise telephone call from the White House inviting her to a Memorial Day reception there. As she mingled at the elegant gathering, too nervous to eat, her 5-year-old daughter clutching her dress, her infant son cradled in her arms, a military aide appeared. The president wanted to see her in the Oval Office.

The Storeys, of Palmer, Mass., joined a growing list of bereaved families granted a private audience with the commander in chief. As Mr. Bush forges ahead with the war in Iraq, these “families of the fallen,” as the White House calls them, are one constituency he can still count on, a powerful reminder to an unpopular president that even in the face of heartbreaking loss, some still believe he is doing the right thing.

Since the war in Afghanistan began six years ago, Mr. Bush has met quietly with more than 450 such families, and is likely to meet more on Sunday, Veterans Day, in Waco, Tex., near his Crawford ranch. Mr. Bush often says he hears their voices — “don’t let my son die in vain,” he quotes them as saying — when making decisions about the war. The White House says families are not asked their political views. Yet war critics wonder just whose voices the president is hearing.

President Bush has always taken on the role of "consoler-in-chief" in many tough situations, from 9/11 to the recent California wildfires. It's a role he does well, and not in the lip-biting "I feel your pain" faux sympathy mode of Bill Clinton, but with genuine empathy for the victims. It has to be especially tough to deal with the families of those whose loved ones were sent into battle by his orders.



You can read the rest of it here.