What’s Gotta Go

I don’t want to get into whether you support the war or not, that is a whole other discussion on a more politically oriented site. What I do want to point out is an error the Army made that is just plain terrible. The AP is reporting (linked to CNN) that because what amounts to a clerical error, letters were sent to the households of 275 dead soldiers urging (the now deceased) soldiers to return to active duty. Wow, talk about kicking a family when they are down.

I am sure everyone involved feels terrible for the mistake, and someone is going to get a royal chewing out and likely more down the line of command. The military does not like looking bad in public; they have enough bad PR to worry about without doing something stupid like this. It doesn’t excuse the problem, and it their regret sounds oh so sincere when run through the publicity filter: “the Army is apologizing to those officers and families affected and ‘regrets any confusion.’” Confusion? I don’t think the families are all that confused. I bet they are a bit more peeved than I would care to put into words here.

Though my father died at a fairly early age (50) for entirely other reasons, I get a small taste of this on a fairly regular basis through various telemarketers and mail shops. I can’t figure out how the post office can mis route my mail so often, yet these marketing list outfits can have my deceased father’s info follow me through 5 moves that I have made from the address that he died at. I do take a morbid kind of enjoyment of laying a guilt trip on a telemarketer that calls asking for my dad by name.

“Do you realize that you are asking for my father who has been dead for over 13 years? I wasn’t too pleased about his early death, thanks for reminding me of it.”

Of course I am not that sensitive at this point, but I have yet to get a call back from any company after laying it on thick like that.

I really feel bad for these families and this terrible reminder that the military that their loved one served with everything they could possibly give has seemingly forgotten the fact that they died. No retribution really can be made for this, just hopefully a strong policy put in place to insure it doesn’t happen again.