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On the morning of October 14th, the Newsweek homepage had four top stories: one about a plane crash killing two people in Los Angeles, one about a bridge collapsing in Johannesburg and killing two people, one about the democratic debates, and one entitled “U.S. Could Benefit From the Death of a Top Iranian Commander in Syria”. The final article is what you might anticipate — an explanation of how the recent death of Iranian military general Hossein Hamedani might allow the US to exploit Iran’s temporary distraction and disorganization in order to gain military traction in places like Syria and Yemen. While perhaps timely and important news, the article gave me pause. How, in the same week that our nation has been mourning the deaths of Americans lost to gun violence within our borders, analyzing accidental deaths caused by plane crashes and bridge accidents, and hosting political discussions about all of the above, could  we simultaneously be celebrating the death of others embroiled in military conflict? What separates tragic losses from strategic ones? Why, if preventable death matters so much to Americans, does war operate outside of the realm of legitimate inquiry into preventable death?

Death has always been a political topic. Hot-button issues such as gun control, health-care policy, physician assisted suicide, and others all reveal the way in which American politics are strongly infused with a reverence for life and a drive to protect Americans from death. However, while the American public obsesses over spectacular instances of death and death within its borders, as identified in an  American Public Health Administration Report, militarism and war have become increasingly prevalent causes of death in places around the world. According to the report:

“The World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health pointed out that war affects children’s health, leads to displacement and migration, and diminishes agricultural productivity. Child and maternal mortality, vaccination rates, birth outcomes, and water quality and sanitation are worse in conflict zones. War has contributed to preventing eradication of polio, may facilitate the spread of HIV/ AIDS, and has decreased availability of health professionals. In addition, landmines cause psychosocial and physical consequences, and pose a threat to food security by rendering agricultural land useless”

Such facts should not come as a surprise. One need look no further than the five o’clock news or CNN twitter page to discover that American wars and imperial projects around the world have caused egregious accounts of combatant and civilian deaths not only through wartime violence, but through the pernicious environments created by war. However, as our populous and elected officials vigorously interrogate ways to prolong and protect American life, they simultaneously encourage and defend our global military entrenchments, ensuring death for others. Gun violence, breast cancer, and car accidents captivate the American conscience and engender a sense of common commitment to the prevention of death while targeted strikes, un-collected land mines, military accidents, and environmental damage caused my US military occupations kill thousands of people. From Iraq, to Djibouti, to Somalia, to Japan, the US military is an active contributor to undue civilian death. So why are these deaths not on our political radar?

Common acceptance of militarism, of the military as a bringer of peace, and of US primacy as a source of stability and safety  are heavily embedded into American culture. The same public health report provides the following insight:

“Militarism is intercalated into many aspects of life in the United States and, since the military draft was eliminated, makes few overt demands of the public except the costs in taxpayer funding. Its expression, magnitude, and implications have become invisible to a large proportion of the civilian population, with little recognition of the human costs or the negative image held by other countries. Militarism has been called a ‘psychosocial disease,’ making it amenable to population-wide interventions”

While more and more people are learning about population health issues and threats to human life, fewer are being forced to call into question the implications of US foreign policy and the risks it entails for civilians around the world. Influenced by the military industrial complex’s infection of academia, policy, and media, those who trouble themselves over death and dying often fail to expand their frame of reference to interrogate the US’ complicity in the production of death, passively consuming geo-strategic explanations of the “utility” of the death of others. Accidental death in LA is a tragedy; accidental civilian deaths in Yemen, Iraq, and Somalia are an invisible but ongoing reality, and the death of enemy combatants and opposing forces are “opportunities.”

The passivity and comfort with which the American public consumes news about death in wartime is anything but benign. The acceptance of military deaths as part of a strategic set of calculations that operate outside of standard civilian concerns carries heavy implications for the ways we accept or reject militarism and the ways we relate to and construct individuals in American war zones.

News articles like the one on Hamedani’s death may just seem like reporting, but such representations of death as “strategic” subtly entrench cultures of accepting some deaths as legitimate, and militarism as an ideological sacred cow. Failures to inquire into and take action to prevent unnecessary death caused by war thus becomes justified by an implicit and untouched understanding of the preservation of US life (and the life of the nation state as an entity), as more valuable than lives lost in the form of collateral damage. Questioning the way in which we consume representations of justified or strategic deaths in war may be crucial to understanding how to better prevent unnecessary loss of life beyond America’s borders, death caused and championed by the American media and political apparatus.

For about half a year now, the media has continued to cover Bobbi Kristina Browns case on life and death. Even months after her official death the media is continuing to cover the court cases that began in early June. This case reminds me of the Terri Schiavo case that we have discussed in class. The huge burden families face when their loved ones are in a coma, with no indications of waking up. Both cases show how a family can truly be teared apart when a young life is near death. Bobbi Krisitina because of her fame prior to her death brought much public attention to these challenges. Recently, a new piece of evidence was brought to the court case against her boyfriend Mr. Gordon. The evidence suggested that Mr. Gordon injected Bobbi Kristina with a a toxic mixture and then placed her body in the bath tube. This evidence if proven true can land Mr. Gordon in jail for murder.

It is interesting to see the change in this case since the beginning and how members of the family always believed that Mr. Gordon had a part in Bobbi Kristian’s death. In the Terri Schiavo case the family and her husband seemed to work together in a private matter when Terri first entered the vegetative state. Although, Michael was granted medical guardianship, her parents did not seem to have a problem with this until he wanted to remove her feeding tube. That was when the case truly became something that the media was interested in, especially when the Pope and Jeb Bush began to voice their opinions.

Both cases began to make me wonder the implications of having such a publicized death. In high school one of my classmates died during winter break our senior year in a car accident. In my town this was a highly publizied death and I always wondered if the girls family enjoyed the media, attention and out pour of grief and mouring that the community created or if they would have preferred a more private experience where they could grieve on their own in private. Something that made me upset about the situation was the school had buses for students who wanted to go to the funeral and people who didn’t even know her went to the funeral just to get out of class.

Bobbi Kristina and Terri Schiavo were both young women who had tragic death which were placed in the eye of the public for a long period of time. Being so publicized must have been very hard for both families and it makes me question when does the media become to much for people to handle. Will they ever respect peoples wishes to grieve in private without writing hateful articles about the different sides of the cases.

The Ambulance Wish Foundation is an organization based in the Netherlands, with a mission similar to that of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The well-known Make-A-Wish Foundation grants wishes to kids with life-threatening and terminal illnesses. These wishes are often extravagant and sometimes seriously awesome, like when San Francisco was transformed into Gotham allowing a young boy to be “Batkid” for the day. The Ambulance Wish Foundation (AWF) grants slightly less eye-catching wishes, but I think they are just as heartwarming. The AWF was founded by Kees Veldboer, an ambulance driver. One day he was transporting an older patient and asked him if there was anything he wanted to see while they were out before taking him back to the white-washed walls of the hospital. The patient requested to see the Vlaardingen canal, so Veldboer let the patient sit outside the canal in the sun and wind until he was ready to leave. This event led to the foundation of the AWF.

The AWF brings peace and joy to people in their final days. The foundation believes “positive end-of-life experiences are far too important to pass up.” They have over 230 volunteers, including highly trained medical staff and custom-built ambulances, and they have fulfilled almost 7,000 wishes. The article I read regarding the AWF included photos of the patients fulfilling their final wishes. These photos are heartwarming in their simplicity. The AWF specializes in older people. These people have often lived full lives, so their wishes are much more simple than those of kids who have just begun to live. The wishes include things such as seeing a favorite painting, watching dolphins, standing on the beach, seeing a grandchild, attending a granddaughter’s wedding, visiting a best friend’s grave, or my favorite, enjoying an ice cream cone with a loved one.

(Photo from http://www.upworthy.com/7-powerful-photographs-of-terminally-ill-patients-living-out-their-final-wishes , author, Evan Porter)

Another wish came from a woman who just wanted to see her home one last time. She asked to be taken to her living room where she sat peacefully for hours, looking around, most likely reminiscing on the memories and experiences from her life that had occurred in one small room.

These wishes make you realize, as cliché as it is, the importance of the small things in life. As the author says, perhaps the things we will remember at the end of our lives won’t be the extraordinary moments and things, but the ordinary ones- “the wallpaper in the house we grew up in, a sunny day spent on the water, or those little everyday moments spent with the people we love most.”

While it is incredible to read what Make-A-Wish does, the simplicity and warmth of the AWF is equally heartwarming. After reading about the many elderly who spend their final days in a hospital or a nursing home, it was lovely to read about these final days which I’m sure, made for good deaths.

http://www.upworthy.com/7-powerful-photographs-of-terminally-ill-patients-living-out-their-final-wishes