06.11.10
Arlington National Cemetery Scandal
As many times as we have said it, managing and operating a cemetery can be a complex task especially if you don’t hold the expertise necessary or at least have a professional mentor to show you the way. We at CemOps have been fortunate over the years to have the latter, putting us in a position to enjoy the expertise after years of mentoring. Considering the number of problems now apparent at Arlington, and you must consider a lack of professional training or expertise on the part of past management. The Secretary of the Army has stated he finds no grounds for criminal considerations, which is most likely correct. Nobody sets out to bury 230 war heroes in the wrong place, or on top of one another, there just wouldnt’ be anything to gain personally by doing so. There is no money changing hands at a national cemetery, which precludes greed or other criminal actions from occuring. No, this is a simple case of the wrong person being put in charge of the most heralded cemetery in our country. There are perhaps a handful of folks with the appropriate credentials in this country to properly manage such a cemetery, which begs the question of the selection process when the former manager was hired.
Now, they say there may be more trouble and have ordered a thorough investigation. Now the real tough questions: 1) Who will perform this investigation, and what expertise do they possess to insure this investigation is in fact thorough? 2) Will this investigation take place as an independent one, with absolutely no interference from federal sources? 3)Who has the appropriate expertise to effect change beyond the investigation and put in place policy and procedures to insure this cannot occur in the future? 4) What is in place now, to allow for corrections later without disturbing an inordinate number of burials, in essence perpetuating a problem already in existence?
CemOps has many more questions than answers at this point in time. We hope to have meaningful conversations in the near term to answer some of these and hopefully be invited on the ground to assist. Our nations war dead deserve better. Their families deserve better. We have the right to expect more of the folks we entrust our national burial grounds to.
