To the Editor:

“Not to See the Fallen Is No Favor,” by David Carr (The Media Equation, May 28), suggests that the reigning assumption among leaders in Iraq is that we can’t handle the truth. In a curious way, it may well be the duty of fallen soldiers to let us see them—wounded, dying and dead.

If we have the temerity to ask them to risk life and limb protecting American interests, we must ask them to help us know what it looks like, what it feels like, so that we can decide, as a Republic and a people, whether we in fact want to exact that private and public cost.

“It is well,” Robert E. Lee is reported to have said, “that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.”

We can’t handle the truth? We had better.

William Monroe
Houston, May 30, 2007

Note from KBJ: I have no objection to the media showing the costs of war, as long as they also show the benefits.