On tonight’s Nightline Ted Koppel will read the names of the 721 Americans who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. However there are some who say this act of respect is nothing more than a ploy to criticize the war. Among those some is the Sinclair Broadcast Group which carries ABC in a number of cities. As a result, they have decided to preempt tonight’s broadcast of Nightline saying, “Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.”

I learned about the Nightline tribute a few days after writing this post in which I said the images of those who have given their lives in Iraq “should be on the front page of every newspaper in America.” So I was pleased to see Nightline doing just that. Similarly, I was appalled when I shortly thereafter learned about Sinclair’s preemption of the broadcast. This is even worse than the recent controversy over the photos of flag draped coffins belonging to U.S. soldiers who had died in Iraq.

In watching the coverage of this war it has simply amazed me how certain conservatives can on the one hand claim to support the troops and on the other hand refuse to honor or even acknowledge their deaths. We can not pretend that war is pretty and clean and that nobody will get hurt. A lie of omission is still a lie, and one can not claim to support the troops while misleading the American people about the extent of what they must face. If these people really do support American soldiers, why then are they too ashamed even to speak their names?

It is far too easy to ignore the consequences of war when the names of the fallen are listed a few at a time deep in the local section of the newspaper or engraved in a wall alongside a thousand other names. It is a very different thing to show their pictures and have people look into their eyes, seeing who they were and all they will ever be. If that turns people against the war it is only because of the realization of the truth of what war really is.

How can it be anything else? There is no bias here and no political agenda. Only names and photos. This will in all liklihood be the closest any news program ever comes to pure, unadulterated truth. If there is anybody in this situation with a political agenda it is not Koppel or anybody at ABC, but the Sinclair Broadcast Group that refuses to air this tribute because they fear the truth.

What Koppel is doing on Nightline is quite simply the very least any of us can do. The dead are beyond us now. We can not help them, and we can not bring them back. We can only remember.