Loss of a soldier in Afghanistan will inevitably spark war debate with renewed reality
Sooner or later a New Zealand serviceman is likely to be killed in Afghanistan. When it happens the New Zealand that I think I know will be sensible about it.
Certainly, the shock will bring home this war as it has not come home yet.
We will debate the purpose and practicalities of the mission with intensity for the first time and it might not be able to survive the scrutiny.
But we will not, save for the predictable veterans of Vietnam protests, treat a soldier's death as a moral outrage.
If this is still the New Zealand I know.
John Langley, an education consultant who writes occasionally on this page, will be feeling lonely at the moment.
On Wednesday he questioned the need for the Prime Minister to rush home from Gallipoli, deserting a trade mission in the Gulf, to attend the funeral of the Air Force helicopter crew killed on Anzac Day.
Just about everybody disagreed with him, in public at least.
A fellow traveller on the trade mission contacted the Herald to say investors they had met had respected Key's decision.
Langley's own board issued a disclaimer and publicly apologised to the Prime Minister.
He expected that. As he wrote on Wednesday,
"One of the problems New Zealand faces is that we are unable to have adult conversations about important issues with ourselves."
Langley blamed the news media, imagining what they would have said of Key "swanning about in another part of the world" when "three brave boys have been killed in the line of duty".
I am not so sure about that. We are not (yet) Americans when it comes to young men in uniforms. The chopper was on its way to a ceremonial fly-over when it crashed for no reason yet revealed.
To call the tragedy death in the line of duty stretches the normal military meaning of the phrase.
Had Key kept to his itinerary, I doubt there would have been much criticism. Everyone bar Langley probably appreciates the gesture now but that does not mean we expected it.
If there had been that expectation - and I didn't hear it - any disappointment would have been overwhelmed this week by the news that Key subsequently made a secretly scheduled visit to Afghanistan. That is where he needed to be.
The revelation that he had to travel back there straight after the funeral makes his attendance all the more remarkable. If we didn't expect it, why did he do it?
Hopefully his reason was the one he gave: Whenuapai Air Force base is in his electorate and he had met the airmen.
Key is one of those people who remembers everyone he meets. He is genuinely interested in them. But it takes a great deal of care to fly around the world for a funeral. Not many do it for anyone outside their immediate family.
Perhaps he decided it was the right thing for a Prime Minister to do. Governments naturally have a special regard for those sections of the state services that may be asked to risk their lives.
I wonder if Key came home because he has mentally readied himself for a fatality in Afghanistan. When he sees the news coverage of death these days he knows he will have to be well-prepared.
Newspapers used to be wary of death. Unless the person was the incumbent Prime Minister or someone equally prominent the circumstances of their death would be covered circumspectly and their funeral was treated as a private occasion.
Editors supposed few bereaved families wanted to share their loss and few readers wanted to dwell on the wrenching sentiments of grief.
I always suspected they were wrong about the bereaved. When I lost a brother I would have loved to tell the world about it.
I remember the gratitude I felt to everyone who came to the funeral and the understanding you could sense in those who had lost someone close. Later, as reporter myself, I would have been able to knock on the door, but we rarely did it in those days.
The old assumption was wrong about the bereaved but I'm not so sure it was wrong about the readers. If today's coverage of someone's death goes far beyond the span of most people's natural interest, nobody is going to say so. The coverage seems capable of creating its own level of communal grief.
This may be a good thing, making the country more sensitive to risk and suffering. It might already have changed the national character in a way that John Key understands better than John Langley.
But I doubt it. When we come to face a death that occurs in our name, the shock will be real and our response mature.
