Bush Lied They Died T-Shirts With Fallen Troops Names Is Tasteless

Have you ever seen something on the news that just made your blood boil? I actually thought about not posting this today because it will just feed the story and help these tasteless opportunists make more money. In the end the story needs to be told, and I am going to do something about it.

You might have heard the “Bush Lied They Died” anti-war catch phrase over the past five years. This is not a post that supports or opposes the Iraq war in any way. This is not a political post. This is a post based in human decency.

The website carryabigsticker.com is selling a T-Shirt that has the names of almost 4,000 fallen US soldiers on it with the words Bush Lied They Died superimposed over the names. There are also other variations of the shirts available including “When they ask why we died tell them it was because our fathers lied.”

Ok, I get it. You are against the war and want to express your free speech and sell T-Shirts that have anti-war slogans on them. That’s cool. No problem. But it crosses a line when you start using the names of the men and women who died fighting that war to pad your company’s bank account.

The parents of one of those soldiers politely asked the company to stop using their son’s name on the T-Shirts. Spc. Brandon Michael Reed was killed by an IED while on patrol in Iraq in 2004. Put yourself in the place of this company. A mother and father whose son gave the greatest sacrifice to his country ask you to stop using his name. What would you do?

I would stop using the soldier’s name. But that’s not what Carry a Big Sticker did. They refused, and now the parents are suing the company to get them to stop. In the meantime, the company is printing even more shirts sighting the increased demand caused by media coverage.

Dan Frazier, the owner of the website, confidently claims that he will continue to print the shirts until demand dries up or “they throw me in jail.”

I am no lawyer, but I don’t think Frazier is looking at any jail time. However, no decent person could argue that this man’s entrepreneurial activities are distasteful and seek to profit on the death of U.S. Soldiers.

I have decided to do something about the situation. I have pulled my lead graphic designer off of his current projects to design a T-Shirt of our own. I have placed calls to several T-Shirt shops asking them to heavily discount the shirts or provide them for free. I am going to sell these shirts on the web and through my local computer repair service centers and donate every penny of the money I make to the Freedom Alliance.

Unlike Mr. Frazier, I am not going to presume to use the names of fallen soldiers to sell T-Shirts without the permission of their families.

Everyone I spoke to today thinks I am over reacting to this story. But I just can’t help to think about how I would feel if my son’s name was used like this. This guy may have a right to print things in bad taste, but that doesn’t mean that decent people can’t show him that there is a better way to do things.

What do you think?