While the Washington Post changed its mind about sponsoring the Pentagon’s “Freedom Walk” propaganda parade and so now has taken a neutral stand, the New York Times goes further, coming out in opposition with a scathing editorial that says the event shows that the Pentagon is badly out of step with public opinion on the war:
The Bush administration has announced plans for a Freedom Walk on Sept. 11, which will start at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall, and include a country music concert. The event is an ill-considered attempt to link the Iraq war to the terrorist attacks of 2001, and misguided in almost every conceivable way. It also badly misreads the public’s mood. The American people are becoming increasingly skeptical about the war. They want answers to hard questions, not pageantry.
It is perfectly appropriate for the Defense Department to organize a memorial for Americans who died on Sept. 11, since many were Pentagon employees. It is also fine to pay tribute to the sacrifices being made by the troops in Iraq. What is disturbing is the Bush administration’s insistence on combining the two in a politically loaded day of marching and entertainment.
Having failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the administration has been eager to repackage the war as a response to Sept. 11. The Freedom Walk appears to be devised to impress this false connection on the popular imagination.
The walk will end with a concert by the country musician Clint Black. Mr. Black is a gifted entertainer, but his song about the Iraq war, “I Raq and Roll” — which contains such lyrics as “our troops take out the garbage, for the good old U.S.A.” — sends a jingoistic message that is particularly out of place at a memorial service. […]
The Defense Department’s ham-handed mixture of mourning and celebration, and its misleading subtext, feels as if it was dreamed up by an overly slick image consultant. It is not the kind of program the administration should be sponsoring, unless it wants to give the impression that the Pentagon’s mood is less serious than the public’s.
