Facing Death: Mortuary Affairs in Joint Operations
In a somewhat gruesome but unblinking new publication (pdf) prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. military prescribes doctrine for the recovery, identification, handling and burial of deceased soldiers, enemy combatants and civilian detainees.
The violent, horrible death of combatants and non-combatants is of course a defining characteristic of war. And the strange efforts by the Bush Administration to prevent the media from photographing flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq (until a lawsuit overturned the policy last year) did nothing to change this reality.
The new doctrinal publication anticipates that the casualties of war may be mutilated or dismembered. They may be dangerously contaminated with chemical or biological agents or radioactive materials. Mass casualties may overwhelm existing facilities, forcing improvised solutions such as mass interment.
The publication stresses the dignified treatment of the dead, and includes summary accounts of the rituals associated with Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim religious traditions. (“Other than common respect, Buddhists do not have any particular requirements concerning the handling of human remains following death.”)
See “Mortuary Affairs in Joint Operations,” Joint Publication 4-06, June 2006 (195 pages, 2.5 MB).
To tune into the action on the ground, we convened practitioners, state and local officials, advocates, and policy experts to discuss what it will actually take to deploy clean energy faster, modernize electricity systems, and lower costs for households.
From grassroots community impacts to global geopolitical dynamics, understanding developing data center capacities is emerging as a critical analytical challenge.
Over the past few months, the Trump administration has been laying the foundation to expand the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) for energy infrastructure and supply chains.
Get it right, and pooled hiring becomes a model for how the federal government decides what to do together and what to do apart. That’s a bigger prize than faster hiring. It’s a more functional government.