What began as a sombre wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, attended by Donald Trump on Monday morning had by Wednesday evening degenerated into a poisonous round of campaign vitriol between the opposing parties in the US election.
Monday marked the third anniversary of the deaths of 13 American service personnel who lost their lives during the calamitous evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021. A suicide bomber killed more than 100 people in an explosion at Kabul airport on August 26th of that year.
As a subsequent statement made clear, families of the deceased had invited Donald Trump to the ceremony and afterwards emphasised that “the president and his team conducted themselves with nothing but the utmost respect and dignity for all of our service members, especially our beloved children.”
That statement was issued in response to an NPR report of an “altercation” between a staff member at Arlington cemetery who had tried to prevent Trump staff members from filming and taking photographs in Section 60 of the cemetery – which is where the fallen from Afghanistan and Iraq are laid to rest. Section 60 is one of the most evocative sections of the historic cemetery because the dates are so shockingly recent.
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Arlington is considered sacrosanct and therefore transcends political messaging. A statement issued by Arlington stated that “federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign.”
Responding to NPR, Steven Cheung, spokesman for the Trump campaign, dismissed the idea of any physical altercation and stated the campaign would release footage of the event “if such defamatory claims are made” before offering his perspective on the incident. “The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”
Whatever the nature of the incident, by spilling into the discourse of the election campaign the ceremony had become embroiled in the grime of political exchanges – the very thing the Arlington staff strive to avoid.
Mark Esper, who had served as defence secretary in the Trump administration, said in a television interview on Wednesday the incident “should be investigated”.
Campaigning in Wisconsin, Republican vice-president nominee JD Vance, told the audience there is “verifiable evidence” the campaign was allowed to have a photographer present at the event before he attacked the record of Kamala Harris as vice-president during the exit from Afghanistan and its aftermath.
“To have those 13 Americans lose their lives and not fire a single person is disgraceful. Kamala Harris is disgraceful. If we’re gonna talk about a story out of those 13 brave innocent Americans who lost their lives [it] is that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened. And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up ... she can ... she can go to hell.”
On Tuesday, a brief video was released on Trump’s TikTok account, featuring images of the day with a brief commentary: “What a horrible day it was. We didn’t lose one person in 18 months, and they took over that disaster, the leaving of Afghanistan.”
Harris has not commented on the controversy, instead undertaking an exultant two-day bus tour of Georgia, culminating on Thursday in a rally in Savannah. A state that had been considered beyond the Democrats just six weeks ago is now neck and neck, with the presidential candidates tied at 49 per cent.
But Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler responded to the Arlington controversy by framing it as another example of Donald Trump’s attitude towards service personnel.
“Listen, this is what we’ve come to expect from Donald Trump and his team,” Tyler told CNN in an interview on Wednesday. “Donald Trump is a person who wants to make everything all about Donald Trump. He’s also somebody who has a history of demeaning and degrading military service members, those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.”
The mutual campaign mudslinging can only be a dismaying turn of events for the staff at Arlington to observe: as anyone who has attended a service there will attest, they tend to their roles as a vocation more than an occupation, and the atmosphere is always informed by their adherence to the dignity and respect of the cemetery.
The deaths of the 13 military personnel are regarded as one of the low points of the Biden-Harris foreign policy record, despite the Democratic argument that the administration was fulfilling a pledge to evacuate made during the Trump administration. It is a subject likely to feature in the debate between the presidential candidates on September 10th and may also now become a talking point when Harris gives her first official sit-down media interview on Thursday night.
On Monday, president Biden released a statement remembering the 13 Americans as “patriots in the highest sense”.
“Some were born the year the war in Afghanistan started. Some were on their second or third tour. But all raised their hand to serve a cause greater than themselves – risking their own safety for the safety of their fellow Americans, Allies, and Afghan partners. They embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless. And we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay but will never cease working to fulfil.”
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