Flat

OPTIMIST: You wouldn't really be able to think this connection between a poster and the world war right through to its logical conclusion.
GRUMBLER: Usque ad finem! If the posters had been shot dead, the human beings would have survived.
Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind

Military units in the United States are now providing families with life-size cardboard cutouts of relatives posted overseas. The National Guard in Maine has given out more than two hundred since January. The scheme began when a potential widow named Cindy Sorenson made a life-size photograph of her ex-husband after he was sent to Iraq. The model "helped [their daughter] cope with missing her father". Now the two-dimensional persons "can be found going on dates with their wives in Alaska and having dinner with their families in Colorado". After all, they don't fight with their spouses, shout at their children, incur medical bills with their post-traumatic stress, or publicly criticise the government for its mendacity and incompetence. Two-dimensional love is a wonderful thing, just like in the movies. "Experts" - whether military or civilian, psychological or public-relations, is not specified - "believe the cutouts are a useful psychological device, especially for children, that helps cope with the stress of long absences". Dear Daddy, you'll be glad to hear I don't miss you so much any more because I have a cardboad cutout instead. Don't hurry back. Then again, with the casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan set to keep on climbing, perhaps the stress of reunion is not considered an overwhelming risk. Meanwhile, the scheme "allows the family to genuinely feel the missing person is still involved in day-to-day life." Leave that poor infinitive where it lies and have a look at the word that splits it. The families genuinely feel that their father, mother, wife or husband is there to play with the children and help with the dishes. It's a pity the cutouts make such convincing human beings yet apparently fail the test as soldiers; otherwise the government could have left the people alone and shipped the cutouts to Iraq. The logistics would certainly be simpler.