The Trump campaign’s conduct at Arlington is shocking but not surprising | Kevin Carroll

Trump's staffers filmed political footage at war graves - and allegedly shoved an army employee who tried to stop them

The tranquil majesty of Arlington national cemetery tends to bring forth civic virtues in Americans and eloquence in their leaders. Speaking there in 1985 above the graves of the fallen, Ronald Reagan observed that while we may imagine the deceased as old men, most were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives - the one they were living and the one they would have lived ... they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers ... They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember."

Nowhere in that vast cemetery is Reagan's point driven home as poignantly as in section 60, which embraces those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice at painfully young ages since 9/11. Here the dates on the simple headstones are within memory, the grief of loved ones is raw and visitors may witness acts of tenderness in response.

Kevin Carroll served as a senior counselor to US secretary of homeland security John Kelly, and as a CIA and US Army officer