written slowly and with apologies for typos, but because it feels important for me to say this:

In this country, we have a tradition of recognizing the deaths of soldiers, by name. If you drive anywhere where there was a battle in the past 200+ years, you will see roadside signs that tell who lived and died there, and a little of why. A lot of the deaths are in ones and twos; a few are larger, but most are fewer than a hundred people. The handful of men who died in Boston when the British fired on a crowd are remembered by name there. So are the people who died at Gettysburg in 1862. They are remembered by name on plaques and markers and statues. Chunks of marble sprout up across acres of battlefield to note which company was there, who died, when. The one civilian casualty, a woman baking bread for Union soldiers who was killed by a Confederate sniper's bullet that came through the walls of the house and hit her as she worked in her kitchen -- she is remembered. Confederate or Union dead, we remember them.

We remember them by name. They're not anonymous.

Nobody who dies while serving in the military is anonymous. They are not living private lives, but official ones; their deaths are public whether they occur at the point of a sabre during Pickett's Charge or under napalm or on a land mine in Vietnam or as a result of a British raid on a settlement in 1779. We remember them by name. We know them. Sometimes, for reasons of security, the circumstances of their deaths are secret and even the names are not made public, but they are still remembered and known by someone, and when it is possible their stories are told.

The Vietnam War memorial on the Mall names everyone who fell and everyone who disappeared and did not come back. People visit there quietly, looking for the names of people they knew, and leave tokens -- a letter, a child's toy, a Purple Heart or Silver Star. It is one of the two quietest places in that noisy city; the other is National Cathedral, where the dead who rest there are also known by name, every one of them. For many years, every time I went down to the Vietnam Wall, I looked through the book of names (located at either end of the wall) to check on one or another friend who went over but whom I couldn't remember coming back. Each time I remembered a different one. Each time I was fortunate; they were not listed. But when I go down to the Wall, I also look each time for the older brother of someone I went to school with, who went missing in action in 1966. He's still missing. I don't think he'll come back, and neither does anyone else, but until his death is accounted for he'll be listed there as missing, just in case.

We remember them by name, every one of them.

We don't recall them as perfect or sanctified, but human. Their deaths do not dwarf their lives, they just complete them. We remember the ones who didn't get home and the ones who are buried in other countries, beneath the poppies in Flanders, but we bring home whoever we can, because they're family. They're ours. Even if they have no relatives, they're ours. If our government had an ounce of conscience, it would do a hell of a lot better job taking care of veterans instead of cutting benefits; sometimes it seems that only the dead are treated well -- but at least what they've done is acknowledged, known. Remembered. Even the Unknown Soldiers from past wars are, actually, known to someone and remembered by someone, even if their names are not public. Their tombs are guarded, day and night, by someone who keeps watch, keeps them company so that they are not alone in the dark. It is a matter of keeping faith and respect, but it is also a matter of memory.

Remembering the dead by name is the purpose of history. Without memory, or names, we become lost , ahistorical, ignorant of who we are, how we came to be here and the cost of that movement from the past to the present. It matters that we remember who was here, what they did, how they lived. It matters.

Nightline is carrying on a tradition more than two centuries old tonight, as Ted Koppel reads aloud the names of those who have died in Iraq. It is remembering, with us, those who have died while serving the country. This is something that occurs outside of party affiliation, regardless of politics or protest. This is an American tradition. We are not an old country, as countries go. As an independent entity, only a couple of centuries; as a colonial entity, a couple more; before that, there are still memories and names and stories but few monuments. We are not borne down by the weight of our history yet, as older countries may be, but still new enough that every one of those names matters.

By pre-empting this broadcast, Sinclair Broadcasting is committing an act that is ahistorical, disrespectful to those who have died, and profoundly unAmerican.