"In his midnight mission to honor the returning war dead, President Obama did more than personally extend the nation's condolences to grieving families gathered at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware."

"He silently saluted in the morning darkness as the remains of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan were transferred from a military transport. He spent close to two hours talking in private with stricken families."

I don't want to be too cynical here, but I just can't help being at least a little bit so. First, as a military man for over 20 years, I've always been somewhat uncomfortable with presidents rendering the military salute anyway, not for the least reason that some of them don't do it very well. But then, I've come across some in the military who don't always, either. Still, I would prefer that our president, during ceremonies and such, render the civilian "salute" of placing the right hand over the heart, rather than render a military salute. The president is by constitutional requirement a civilian. The requirement that our president, albeit also our commander-in-chief, is a civilian exercising civilian control over our military is one of our basic checks and balances, so I want our president to look and act like a civilian. I guess that's part of what makes me feel more comfortable seeing only military personnel and veterans rendering the military salute. You know, people who've "been there, done that." But, alas, one of my favorite of all our presidents, Ronald Reagan, sort of started all this presidential military saluting stuff by asking his military advisor if he could return military salutes to those in the military who saluted him and was told that as the commander-in-chief he could salute whomever he wanted. Thus, presidents using the military salute almost wherever and whenever they want to was off to the races.

And here, in all fairness, I will give Obama credit. During his campaign, he didn't know the difference between a military battalion and a brigade, which is basically that a brigade may be three to four to even five times the size of a battalion and has a lot more equipment, and he may still not know much about the military. I suspect he doesn't. In fact, he may never know much more about it than he needs so that he sounds like he knows a lot by how he talks about it. But that military saluting thing, he's got that down. He's had someone instruct him and he's practiced in front of a mirror, and he renders the military salute as well as just about anybody. Well, probably except for those of us who've been on military drill teams when we were younger.

Anyway, I've digressed from my main point. I agree it was a nice gesture for Obama to go to Dover last week, but I think it was more photo op than anything else.

The last couple of weeks haven't gone too well for the campaigner-in-chief and he needed another distraction -- something other than his dithering over Afghanistan, his being embarrassed by Iran (again), his hypocritical hype about health care reform -- for the "newsers" to talk about for a while.

(I know, while I dither over Afghanistan, I'll do something to show my respect for the troops! How about some kind of photo op we can feed the media? Oh, Dover AFB? What about Dover? Oh, really? That sounds like just the thing. Set it up.)

He got permission from one of the families involved in welcoming home their dead hero at Dover AFB for the repatriation to be photographed and/or videotaped and had himself videotaped solemnly saluting the returning remains.

Of course, it was also something which liberal pundits have since repeatedly pointed out that Bush never did because he didn't want to call attention to how many flag covered coffins were coming home, despite the fact that how many casualties we had for any given day, week or month were all over TV and print media all the time.

It might just as well be said that Bush also didn't want to call attention to himself to the point of having himself photographed or videotaped all the many times he met in private with, comforted, and prayed and wept with the families of the fallen, either. But, hey, the liberal pundits don't say much about that. I guess, if it's not a photo op and it's not as much about you as it is about whomever you're "honoring," then it doesn't really count, huh?

But, once again, Obama, as much narcissist-in-chief as commander-in-chief, couldn't help making the Dover event as much about himself as the returning dead by having his solemn after-midnight and picture perfect salute recorded for the evening news. So, good for him for going but shame on him for making it as much about himself (again) as anything and for using it as a deceitful distraction during his dithering indecision about Afghanistan.