Trump Manages to Spoil One of Our Few Remaining Sacred Spaces
Section 60 matters deeply for post-9/11 veterans. It’s a shame it’s being politicized.
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY’S SECTION 60 is in the news. I really wish it weren’t. I have friends there.
I rarely take visitors to Section 60. It’s a sacred place, one of the few left in modern America. While the pageantry of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a must-see tourist stop, Section 60 is entirely different.
It’s public, but private. It’s a place for grieving. During my numerous trips to those hallowed grounds, I’ve wallowed in pain and sobbed uncontrollably. It’s hard to fathom that Donald Trump’s campaign has taken this sacred place and thrown it into the chasm that is our contemporary partisan politics.
In that little corner of America lie, among others there, men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion in the Global War on Terrorism. My brothers in arms A1C LeeBernard Chavis and Cpt. Jesse Melton III are buried there. Juba, the Sniper of Baghdad, an anonymous (and possibly fictitious) insurgent in the Islamic Army of Iraq, killed Chavis on a beautiful October day—and filmed it. He was the first troop I lost in combat—the first of many.
Jesse was my friend. As a Marine, Jesse led from the front and often manned his vehicle’s turret machine gun, usually the job of a junior enlisted. He was manning the gun when his vehicle struck a double-stacked anti-tank mine, killing Jesse, two other service members, and an interpreter. It was a devastating blow delivered by an experienced Taliban IED crew.
Not long ago, I took two Afghans to Section 60. They had served alongside the men and women buried there. As we approached the section, I briefed them on proper etiquette during their visit. One of them, Hamid, had been my Pashto instructor a decade ago. He’s now an American citizen and has succeeded in America’s corporate world. The other, Shir Zad, landed on America’s shores in late 2021.
“Look, guys, be quiet and respectful,” I counseled. “It’s not unusual to see families openly mourning their sons and daughters.”
They both agreed. They wanted to visit that solemn place because they understood its meaning. They needed to remind themselves that despite America’s dishonorable conduct in Afghanistan, thousands of Americans gave their lives for their freedom.
“Lastly, don’t take any pictures or film anything unless I tell you it’s okay,” I warned. “This section is different from the rest of the cemetery. It’s sacred.”
For the next half hour, my Afghan brothers followed the proper etiquette. Shir Zad, in his mid-twenties, was overwhelmed by the experience.
“When I saw that family sitting in front of their son’s grave,” he explained, “I felt such sorrow.” He had seen plenty of sorrow in Afghanistan. This may have been the first time he’d seen it in America.
Both men honored America’s fallen heroes with all the respect they could muster. They understood they were visiting a place most Americans never see. And they understood that I was sharing with them a brief glimpse into the unimaginable pain that scars a generation of America’s combat veterans.
“It was amazing,” Shir Zad said, “But very sad.”
I THOUGHT OF HAMID AND SHIR ZAD when National Public Radio broke the story alleging that members of President Trump’s team got into an altercation with an Arlington National Cemetery official on Monday. According to subsequent reporting, a Trump campaign staffer physically and verbally assaulted a cemetery official who was trying to prevent the campaign from recording video at Section 60.
Although Section 60 visitors often take personal photos of their beloveds’ graves, I’ve never seen anyone film anything during my more than a dozen trips there over the last twenty years.
In response to reports about the altercation, the cemetery explained in a statement 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.” The statement also explained that “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
The Trump campaign disputes the details of the incident and claims to have received permission from slain soldiers’ families to film in Section 60 (which still doesn’t negate the rules). A Trump spokesman also accused the cemetery official of “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but if I had been there, I probably would have suffered a mental health episode. And judging by how some other veterans have responded to the story, I’m not alone.
Maybe this whole thing is a big misunderstanding, but based on Trump’s record, it’s hard to believe he wasn’t using the graves of my brothers and sisters for his campaign.
THE ENTIRE EPISODE is a depressing reminder of how rotten our civic hygiene has become. While Trump’s record and the Biden-Harris record on Afghanistan are nothing to brag about, both Hamid and Shir Zad expressed worries about a second Trump administration.
“I hate Biden,” Hamid said, “But I don’t trust Trump, especially that [Stephen] Miller person. He doesn’t like Muslims.”
Depressingly, Trump doesn’t seem to see the people under those headstones as real. And while Trump says he got “permission” from the families he was with to film there, other families might have objected. I imagine some of those buried in Section 60 wouldn’t have supported his candidacy and wouldn’t have wanted to be in his campaign video.
I don’t know what part of this story makes me the saddest. It could be the fact that one of the two major parties, the one I’ve always been predisposed toward, has nominated—for the third straight time—a man who has consistently demonstrated an inability to understand honor and dignity.
It could be Trump’s persistent (and undisciplined) flouting of the rules.
It could be that all of this is a distraction from the real issues facing veterans and the military: the moral injury that’s eating our veterans from the inside out and hampering recruitment; the utter lack of accountability for two lost wars; the imbalance of having the smallest military since World War II even as the world gets more dangerous; the serious doubt about whether the American military or the United States as a country is prepared to win a major war.
But I think most of all it’s this: The rules against using images or video of Section 60 in political campaigns are there for a reason. The people who gave their lives didn’t swear an oath and give all to a party or a candidate. They swore to protect the Constitution and they sacrificed to protect this country. Their sacrifice is one of the last reminders we have that there exists an American project that is bigger than parties and tribes and campaigns, and that it’s worth fighting, dying, and even killing for. All that’s asked in return is that we don’t subject them to our politics, that we keep them in an elevated, venerated place where they belong.
If we can’t do that—if we let Section 60 become just another political weapon to use against each other—then what was all that sacrifice for?
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