PROVING MY POINT FOR ME

Wednesday's Times had an editorial called "Mourning in America" by a Reagan advance man talking about the memorial for the Marines killed in the Beirut bombing. You knew I'd get around to this one eventually.

I appreciate this man's eloquent articulation of the grief and anguish of the people who were there when word came in of the death of the Marines in Lebanon, and of the decisions taken at the time to send the president to the memorial service for them. But his articulation of why it was important for President Reagan to attend that memorial in that time, at that place actually proves my point for me.

John B. Roberts II writes:"The commander in chief should publicly honor the individual lives sacrificed in war. He should show his respect in front of the television cameras. A nation is a community, and the lives that are lost belong not just to their families, but to us all. As the only political figure who represents the whole nation, the duty of commemorating these deaths belongs uniquely to the president."

When a large number of troops (or Americans period, as in the Embassy bombings, as in the Oklahoma City bombing, or small number of Americans in extraordinary circumstances, as when a Shuttle explodes) dies and there is a single memorial service for all of them simultaneously, that memorial is not only about each individual life lost, it is also about the event itself in a way, and the president then steps in as Head of State, and symbolically represents the American people -- he becomes the Mourner-in-Chief.

Going to individual service members funerals is completely, radically different than attending a national memorial service. Consider the paradox. Mr. Roberts continues this way:

"Skipping memorial services makes the president look weak. It creates the impression that he values his own political standing above the lost lives of servicemen and women. Avoiding the grieving families invites demagoguery because so many of our professional soldiers come from the middle and lower classes of American society, and not the president's own privileged social class. With an election approaching, presenting the picture of a president who has time for fundraisers but not for military funerals would be an egregious mistake."

But there is no evidence that Mr. Reagan ever attended a single indivdual funeral for any service member killed in Grenada. Does Mr. Roberts really believed that that lack made Mr. Reagan look so weak he was, say, unable to deal effectively with the Soviets in the aftermath of Grenada?