TELL ME WHAT WERE THEIR NAMES, TELL ME WHAT WERE THEIR NAMES

One of the more poignant and powerful songs from World War II was "Rueben James" written by our poet laureate of the common man, Woodie Guthrie. It commemorates the sinking of the US Destroyer Rueben James on October 31, 1941, by a German submarine while escorting ships supplying England with war material shortly before US entry in WWII. 115 crew members perished and only 44 survived. The majesty of the song is that it doesn't mention the world war or even our eventual adversary Germany. Its simply asks the listener two questions: "What were their names?", and, "Did you have a friend on the good Rueben James?" The song achieves a universality in its evocation of real human beings being killed as opposed to just statistics.

I'm reminded of Guthrie's song when thinking about the slaughter of 16 Afghans; 4 men, 3 women and 9 children, apparently by a lone, mentally unhinged soldier, who left his base one night and systematically carried out his slaughter in two nearby villages, shooting his victims in their homes before burning their bodies.


We now know the name of the suspected shooter who has been furnished a celebrity defense lawyer, and we hear of many reasons offered to explain his grotesque behavior. The celebrity lawyer has met with the suspect, who, he says, has no memory of the incident. Very convenient.

But we haven't now and may never know the names of the 16 Afghans shot down and burned for the crime of being the first civilians the shooter came upon. Maybe an Afghan equivalent of Woodie Guthrie can pen a song about them to remind us that they were someone's mother or father or son or daughter or sister or brother, or as Guthrie so eloquently sang, simply a friend. As we focus all our attention on the man who threw away his life in one deadly act of rage, his victims deserve nothing less.