Bush Gives Memorial Day Address: Black Hole of Irony Created

The administration that has been claiming for the past several weeks that it can't recall its own policies is suddenly the champion of memory.

In Bush's radio address on Saturday, he told the story of Marine Sgt. David Christoff who died in the Iraq war. Christoff joined the military on September 12th, 2001. His reason for enlisting: "I don't want my brother and sister to live in fear."

I understand his impulse. September 11th was terrifying and bewildering. I've never identified so strongly as an American nor felt so protective of this country.

Bush wants us only to remember that shock and fear. Apart from that, his Memorial Day speeches have exhorted us to forget.

He cynically uses the story of Christoff to make us forget that this Marine's death in the Iraq was had nothing to do with the reason he enlisted--the September 11th attacks.

Bush speech this morning at the Arlington National Cemetary has a similar project of un-memory.

In this morning's address, Bush spins the now-familiar fiction that the war in Iraq is essential to protecting freedom in this country:

The greatest memorial to our fallen troops cannot be found in the words we say or the places we gather. The more lasting tribute is all around us -- a country where citizens have the right to worship as they want, to march for what they believe, and to say what they think. These freedoms came at great costs -- and they will survive only as long as there are those willing to step forward to defend them against determined enemies.

It is, of course, utter nonsense to suggest that the war will ensure our freedoms of religion, assembly, and speech. It's pure doublespeak, designed to make us forget that it's our own government who is surveilling mosques, corralling protesters into Orwellian "free speech zones," and compiling police databases of peaceful dissidents.

The Bush administration wants to use this Memorial Day to make us forget the truth and to submit to the palliations of a rhetoric that imposes meaning on the violence and death in Iraq. On what Bush, with cynical irony, calls "this Day of Memory," he tries to sever us from our memories and substitute for them self-serving fictions.

Our troops and our dead deserve better.