Meeting with the families who lost loved ones

Sheryl Gay Stolberg:

Late one night last year, while her husband was an Army scout in Iraq, Melissa Storey sat in the quiet of her bedroom to write President Bush a letter. She wanted him to know “we believed in him.” And after Staff Sgt. Clint Storey, 30, was killed by a roadside bomb, his widow put pen to paper again.

“I felt like I needed to let him know I don’t hate him because my husband is dead,” Mrs. Storey said, “that I don’t blame him for Clint dying over there.”

The correspondence did not go unnoticed. In May, Mrs. Storey received a surprise telephone call from the White House inviting her to a Memorial Day reception there. As she mingled at the elegant gathering, too nervous to eat, her 5-year-old daughter clutching her dress, her infant son cradled in her arms, a military aide appeared. The president wanted to see her in the Oval Office.

The Storeys, of Palmer, Mass., joined a growing list of bereaved families granted a private audience with the commander in chief. As Mr. Bush forges ahead with the war in Iraq, these “families of the fallen,” as the White House calls them, are one constituency he can still count on, a powerful reminder to an unpopular president that even in the face of heartbreaking loss, some still believe he is doing the right thing.

Since the war in Afghanistan began six years ago, Mr. Bush has met quietly with more than 450 such families, and is likely to meet more on Sunday, Veterans Day, in Waco, Tex., near his Crawford ranch. Mr. Bush often says he hears their voices — “don’t let my son die in vain,” he quotes them as saying — when making decisions about the war. The White House says families are not asked their political views. Yet war critics wonder just whose voices the president is hearing.

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In a recent interview with conservative columnists, Mr. Bush said” “I am constantly trying to get a sense of the military, the people that are out there in the fight. And the question is, Are their families in the fight?”

To see to it that they are, Mr. Bush often plays the role of social worker in his family meetings, asking participants about issues like benefits and health care. Mrs. Storey said the president “seemed to get really upset” when she told him she was not getting her survivor’s benefits. Within a week, she said, “the checks began showing up.”

It has been nearly six months since their meeting, and sometimes Mrs. Storey still finds it hard to believe that the simple act of writing a letter brought her into the presence of the president of the United States. She still has the photographs from the session, the letters she and Mr. Bush exchanged. Living in the heavily Democratic state of Massachusetts, she said, it is not easy to be a Bush supporter.

“When I tell the people I met the president, a lot of people will give that look,” she said. “I say, I don’t care what your opinion is of him. You have your opinion, I have mine, but I’ve met him and he’s a good guy. I cannot say anything negative about that man. He showed us nothing but kindness.”

The story also covers the war critics and their whining. It is hard to have much respect for their point of view even when I have great respect for the sacrifice made by their relatives. Their anti war position dishonors their sacrifice. I also don't have much respect for the irrational anti Bush hatred that the left has spawned in this country. People like Melissa Storey and her husband are what make this country great and they deserve respect and honor.

President Bush is a decent man who has overcome obstacles to victory and he deserves better than what many Americans have given in return for those efforts. The victory in Iraq will do more to prevent future wars than anything any anti war activist will ever accomplish. By defeating al Qaeda and its strategy in Iraq, we can discourage future insurgency efforts that those who wish us harm might otherwise have started. Bush's determination to achieve victory is all that stood between us and a victory for evil and the war critics need to recognize that fact.