Barack Obama saluted the caskets of fallen soldiers upon their return after being killed during military service. The President reflected on the somber nature of the greeting at Dover Air base. The salute was historic because Barack Obama lifted the ban after President George W. Bush refused to greet the caskets of fallen soldiers in the military and focus on the living relatives.
President Obama traveled overnight to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans killed in military service this week, the height of the bloodiest month for the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan.
In an unannounced trip in the middle of the night, the president went to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware by Marine helicopter to be present for the arrival of the bodies of the fallen troops.
The solemn visit was the first of its kind for Obama, and comes as he is withdrawing troops from Iraq but contemplating a troop increase in Afghanistan. Earlier this week, Obama spoke to sailors and aviators at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida, where he promised that he would count the full cost of war before deciding to send more military into harm’s way.
“Obviously it was a sobering reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our young men and women in uniform are engaging in every single day — not only our troops, but their families as well,” Obama said later today, at the White House. “And so Michelle and I are constantly mindful of those sacrifices.
“And obviously the burden that both our troops and our families bear in any wartime situation is going to bear on how I see these conflicts,” said Obama, deliberating over the way forward in Afghanistan. “It is something that I think about each and every day.”
The administration this year lifted a longstanding ban on media coverage of the return of fallen service members. Obama was accompanied by a small pool of White House reporters who were on duty overnight.
The service members returning overnight were the seven Army soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency agents killed when their MH-47 Chinook crashed at Darreh-ye-bum, and eight soldiers killed when their STRYKER personnel vehicle was struck by an IED blast in the Arghandab River Valley. [source]
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