US President Barack Obama bore witness Thursday to the homecoming of US war dead from Afghanistan as he considered options on sending thousands of more troops into the battle zone. Obama left the White House just before midnight Wednesday with a small group of reporters for a short trip to Delaware to welcome home the remains of 18 US personnel killed Monday in Afghanistan.
It was Obama's first such journey to Dover Air Force Base, where the remains of virtually all US service members killed in Afghanistan and Iraq arrive. The sobering move was highly symbolic as the president weighs the decision of a revised strategy for the region. Obama's predecessor, president George W. Bush, had banned news coverage of returning bodies from foreign military operations.
Arriving home were the remains of 15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents, whose deaths contributed to the deadliest monthly toll for US forces in the eight-year conflict in Afghanistan. Seven of the soldiers and the DEA agents died when their helicopter crashed, and the eight other soldiers were killed separately when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.
Obama, wearing a dark overcoat on a warm October night, met with relatives of the dead at an on-base chapel during his near four-hour visit. News reporters were only permitted to observe one transfer, according to the wishes of family members. Obama, standing at attention and saluting, stood alongside soldiers as the remains of army sergeant Dale Griffin from Indiana were carried from the plane. The ban on media coverage of transfers began under former president George Bush during the first Gulf war, and was renewed by his son George W. Bush, as military action got underway in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.
Images of honour guards carrying the coffins from the bellies of military transport planes became a grim symbol of the Vietnam war, and a graphic reminder of the mounting death toll. More than 5,000 US military personnel have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates reversed the controversial policy banning media coverage in February, saying the Pentagon would leave it up to the families to decide whether to allow coverage. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama's most difficult duty as US commander-in-chief was addressing the families of war dead. His "hardest task," Gibbs told reporters Wednesday, "is signing the condolence letter to a loved one who's lost a son or a daughter or a husband, a wife, in Iraq or Afghanistan."