Grieving families gathered at Arlington National Cemetery last week to commemorate the third anniversary of a terrorist attack in Afghanistan that took the lives of 13 brave American troops.
What was supposed to be a healing moment — a simple wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns — became a political event when campaign officials and cameramen attended the ceremony and visited Section 60 of the cemetery. Section 60 holds the remains of hundreds of men and women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I was sorry to see that happen and never want to see it happen again.
To be sure, I hope the wreath-laying offered solace to those Gold Star families and the veterans who participated. I hope that, even if only for a moment, the burden of their unimaginable sorrow was lifted. They had every right to be there, as did their special guest.
But no part of Arlington — or any veterans’ cemetery for that matter — should ever play host to partisan activity. These cemeteries are sacred ground. They represent the final resting places of our best, our brightest, our most unselfish citizens.
Our fallen and departed veterans did not serve, fight or die for party. They fought and died for country, for each other, for their families and for us. They served in a military that defends all Americans — regardless of creed, color, race and, yes, voting habits.
Politics has no place in the ranks. And it absolutely has no place in our national cemeteries.
That goes double for Section 60. For the surviving family members of the men and women buried there, Section 60 is not a graveyard. It is a sanctuary, as alive to them now as their loved ones were not so long ago. Their memories — and their loss — are as thick as the hot summer air and as fresh and fragrant as the turf so recently turned over.
Walk those neat, clean white rows for yourself. Read the headstones. And marvel at the youth beneath your feet. There are few old men or old women buried in Section 60. And there aren’t many old mourners, either. On any given day, you’ll see school-age kids missing a mom or dad, young spouses yearning for the soft embrace of a husband or wife, and parents far too young to have buried a son or a daughter.
Talk to those mourners, as I have, and you’ll hear the stories of the fallen. You’ll hear about the fish they caught, the marathons they ran, the jokes they pulled, the love and the life they embraced. But you won’t hear a whit about politics. Not a breath about who voted for whom. Section 60 is far too big a place for that.
These families and friends come to pray, to cry, to read aloud from a favorite book, to spread a blanket on the soft grass and nap and dream of closer, happier days. It may be open to the public, but Section 60 is an intensely private place. That’s why there are strict rules there and elsewhere at the cemetery forbidding partisan activity, including campaign photography.
To intrude upon that scene — to visit politics upon it — is to do much more than violate those rules; it is to betray the very nature of Arlington. It is to mock the apolitical nature of our military and to dishonor the sacrifices made by those who rest there. Worse, it may lead others to think less of those sacrifices, to view them as smaller than they actually were. And that’s a travesty, no matter what the visitor may have intended.
About the author: Mike Mullen, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011.
