For some time now, I've been studying the war in Afghanistan, most intently during the months leading up to President Obama's November win, and since that time.  I haven't written about Afghanistan yet, but I've been thinking about it a great deal, most especially because members of my family will most likely be called upon to fight there. 

(Two have already been, once each.  One is now retired Army Special Forces and the other is active-duty SF.  Another nephew is also active-duty army who did a long dangerous hitch in Iraq and will most likely wind up doing at least one in Afghanistan.  My son and another nephew are still in their Ready Reserve status and could be called up at any time and deployed there.) 

Since fresh new troops have been sent in recent weeks, culminating in a major push in the Helmand River Valley by the Marines that began yesterday, I thought it was a good time to share my perspective, especially since, as a Marine mom whose son did two combat deployments to Iraq and whose nephews did five more, I opposed that war, even back in the days when it was a mere glimmer in the mad eyes of Bush and his oilman armchair warrior cronies.

There are many good peace activists who are absolutely opposed to any troop buildup in Afghanistan for any reason whatsoever, and who believe, categorically, that we should pull everybody out RIGHT NOW, as we appear to be doing in Iraq.  (Or will have done, by 2012.)

They believe the war is unwinnable and that sending more troops signifies that this is "another Vietnam," as I've seen some call it, or "another Russian-type situation" as have others.

I disagree.

In order to explain why, I'm going to provide as many links as I can that will divide up this piece into several sections: I. Bush's Afghanistan  II.  Obama's Promises  III.  The New Generals' New Strategy and IV.  Obama's Afghanistan.

(Note:  It will probably be the length of a magazine article by the time I'm done, so if you're in a rush right now, you might bookmark this or otherwise return to it when you have a little time and want to read it without skimming through in a hurry.)

 

I.  Bush's Afghanistan

Everybody knows that Afghanistan was Bush's Forgotten War before they'd even caught Bin Laden.  (Oh yeah.  They still haven't caught him.)  Donald Rumsfeld was famous for whining that "there aren't any good targets" to bomb in Afghanistan, for one thing, and for another, the real war they always wanted to fight, since 1991 in fact, was Iraq.

Yes, our forces, helped by the Brits and others, kicked al Qaeda butt and installed their own guy in Kabul, and I don't take anything away from the bravery of our troops who were the point of the spear in those battles.  There is no such thing as an "easy war."  Getting shot at is getting shot at, and there's nothing easy about it unless you're using paint guns, or like maybe Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and All Their Enablers, your feverish imaginations.

But by 2002, Bush and Co. were already training their short attention spans on Iraq, and in no time at all, they had drained troops, materiel, helicopters, planes, artillery--everything the guys needed to root out al Qaeda and the Taliban and secure that population, thus protecting us from their unholy alliance--(you know, the one that brought us 9/11 in the first place), out of Afghanistan and into Iraq, where it stayed for the next seven years.

You can't imagine how tough it was on those who were left to fight this war with NOTHING.  Stuck in miserable little shanty-outposts on isolated mountain peaks; no showers, no phones, virtually no air support and scanty artillery--for months, under fire daily, daily, daily; it's been HELL.

Because so much of our own attention was preoccupied with that illegal, bloody, endless war in Iraq, we failed to take into account just what life was like for the troops who DID deploy to Afghanistan.  (And understand, many of them had already done one or more deployments to Iraq before they even showed up in those remote mountain outposts.)

The New York Times has done an extraordinary job of NOT forgetting Afghanistan, and its intrepid little cadre of war reporters and their cameramen/women have traipsed into some of the worst areas of fighting to chronicle for us what it has been like, sometimes providing riveting slideshows and audio shows of firefights.

Also to be commended is Sebastian Junger (who wrote The Perfect Storm), and who has made numerous journeys deep into the bowels of the beast for Vanity Fair and Outdoor magazines, with his photographer, Tim Hetherington, for which they have won numerous prestigious journalism and news-photography awards.

And I would be remiss if I neglected to mention Richard Engel from NBC news, whose work has been unparallelled.

Here are some of the best articles and photo essays I've found:

*"G.I.'s in Remote Post have Weary Jobs, Drawing Fire," C.J. Chivers

*"Turning Tables, U.S. Troops Ambush Taliban With Swift and Lethal Results," C.J. Chivers

*"Pinned Down, a Sprint to Escape Taliban Zone," C.J. Chivers

"In Bleak Afghan Outpost, Troops Slog On," C.J. Chivers

*"Return to the Valley of Death," Sebastian Junger 

(For several links to Tim Hetherington's stunning photo essays, look here.)

One of the best pieces appeared in New York Times Magazine ("A Change in MIssion" by Kristen Henderson) just a couple weeks ago, but I will link to that in a moment because it deals with how the war is beginning to change with a new commander-in-chief, and the challenges the junior officers in the field (lieutenants and captains) are facing, implementing those changes.

Right now, we're talking about Bush's War.

This war, for the men and women who have been ABANDONED for the past seven years while they slogged on and slogged on, has been impossible to fight.  They haven't had vehicles, or helicopters, or enough troops or artillery, or simple things like a place to eat.  They haven't had decent supplies of ANYTHING, and for the men (combat units are still all-male) stranded on these remote outposts, the firefights with Taliban number in the hundreds. 

One unit I read about has been in place for about six months and have so far dealt with FIVE HUNDRED firefights.

You do the math.

It has been piss-poor, the way these brave men have been treated.  Rotten.  Miserable.  SHAMEFUL.

And the U.S. military is not to be blamed for it, because they've done the best they can with this groaning responsibility thrust upon them by Bush and Co--to fight two wars.  There was once an old sit-com that came out during the Carter years called, "Carter Country," which featured a (very) small-town Southern sheriff's department.  They had this fat, worthless little mayor who was forever getting the little town into some kind of dire straits and then turning to the sheriff or his longsuffering aide and waving his fingers, blithely grinning and saying, "Handle it, handle it!"

This is what the military's boss did to them for eight outrageous years.  Bogged them down in intractible wars, then figuratively grinned and said, "Handle it, handle it!"

(While all the time, it must be remembered, boasting of maybe bombing Iran or North Korea.)

And while fighting the Forgotten War, troops also had to deal with regular guerilla-war problems:

*"In Afghanistan, Terrain Rivals Taliban as Enemy," Candace Rondeaux

*"Afghan Officials Aided in Attack on U.S. Soldiers," Eric Schmidt; (in which nine American troops were killed and 27 were injured, just two weeks before going home following a 15-month deployment)

*"Afghan Firefight Shows Challenge for US Troops," Chris Brummitt, writing for the AP

Every time I would read one of these articles, I would get so angry I would shake from head to foot.  Nobody loved using the troops as a photo-op backdrop or weepy speech-stuffer better than George W. Bush. 

And nobody--EVER--abused our troops worse.

 

II.  Obama's Promises

Understand that, whenever I would read about the godawful situation in Afghanistan, I would read a wish-list of what would be needed to fix the situation, from troops on the ground, from the generals, from aide workers, from diplomats, from Aghans themselves.  And nearly always, they would say, "But that will probably never happen."

Then Obama was elected president.

One of the first things he did was order up a full review of what would be needed from General Petraeus, and he gave the general two months to come up with it.  Petraeus is a highly-educated man who has surrounded himself with military advisors who, like himself, have doctorates or otherwise a scholarly background.  He combines this perspective with on-the-ground savvy when he conducts these studies.

And the plan his task force came up with was just exactly what all those people had been saying would be needed.

The only difference is that THIS time, someone was listening.

And what many of the doubters don't seem to realize is that increasing the numbers of troops in-country is only PART of that strategy.  It's not like Vietnam, when we simply escalated and escalated and escalated our occupying forces, nor is it like the Soviet Union, who endeavored to fight a conventional war when it sent its troops into Afghanistan.

This is different.

Two of the best essays I've found that explain the difference, in proper historial context, with the new strategy are:

*"Graveyard Myths," Peter Bergen

*"A Manhunt or a Vital War?" Robert D. Kaplan

What sets Obama's strategy apart from Bush's is that, first of all, there IS a strategy.

During the worst of the Forgotten-War days, commanders on the ground complained that there was, quite simply, NO STRATEGY for dealing with Afghanistan. 

This comes as no surprise to those of us who watched Iraq implode under the no-strategy Bush Rule there, but in the case of Afghanistan, when it is so desperately important that we not allow al Qaeda to resettle into their comfy little Taliban homes and plot anew, unbothered, to kill Americans--this was just unforgivable, and frustrating beyond belief for the military that was tasked with the no-strategy war.

Obama's careful, considered approach has been dramatically different because there IS a strategy and there IS an exit plan.  No, you can't put a timeframe on it, not yet.  But it will begin to take shape over the course of the next year.

The strategy includes, yes, more troops in the short-term.  This is necessary not just to relieve the beleagured mountain-guys who've been stuck in Nowhereland for years now, but to throw out the Taliban in areas where it's been operating with impunity, areas such as the rich Helmand River Valley area, where poppy-farming supports the opium trade that keeps al Qaeda in operation.

We just did not have enough troops to spread around that enormous country, at least, not in force, and not in a way that they could STAY once they cleared out an area.  The local populations do not like the Taliban, by and large, but they fear them greatly, and with good reason.  They need protection, and we have not been able to provide it for them.

But beyond that, Obama's plan calls on a gigantic influx of civilians to help build this new Afghanistan--not just billions to bury in no-bid contract building projects, but actual civil servants to help teach Afghans how to take care of themselves.

For two quick, one-page assessments of this strategy, here are editorials from the New York Times and the Washington Post on this subject that appeared in March--before Pakistan had even begun clamping down on ITS side of the border, affectively creating a vise to trap terrorists:

*"The Price of Realism," Washington Post

*"The Remembered War," New York Times

I'm going to get into more detail about the new strategy in part IV, but for now, I want to draw attention to the new guys who are going to be called upon to implement the new strategy:

 

III.  The New Generals' New Strategy

There was, in the beginning, some worry about Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, who comes from a top-secret Special Forces background and whose responsibilities have been, to date, to track down terrorists and kill them.  So there was some concern that he wouldn't "get" Obama's so-called "soft power" approach.

And yes, there are, historically, some generals like, say, Patton, who are bad-ass bastards all the way through, my-way-or-the-highway types to whom the troops are pretty much chess pieces to be shoved around on a board, damn the casualties.

Then there are the Dwight D. Eisenhowers, the generals who learn as they go and adjust their approaches accordingly, to whom each and every one of those troops is a flesh-and-blood human being and somebody's son or daughter.

Which type of general do you think a man like Barack Obama would favor?

This reminds me of a funny story.  (Yes, really.)  It's been my observation that some people are in awe of generals, maybe a little bit afraid of them.  They seem to think that becoming a general is some sort of superhuman accomplishment, reserved only for the choicest among us.

Now, most of you know I've got a brother-in-law who retired at the rank of Brigadier General of the U.S. Army Special Forces.  Both his sons are active-duty army and both are captains now with their own company commands.

His sister, my sister-in-law, Kay, is the mother of a Marine who served three combat deployments to Iraq as an enlisted man.  Even though he is no longer active-duty, she still volunteers every Sunday afternoon of her life with the USO out at DFW airport.  One of the things they do is see off deploying troops, providing Care packages for them with things like phone cards and edible goodies.

One time, the deploying troops were accompanied by a general who was also deploying.

Kay asked the other volunteers if anybody had given the general a Care package.

They looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted horns and said, "Well, NO.  He's...he's a GENERAL."

Cocking her head, she said, "So what?  He's just somebody's dumb old big brother."

With that, she marched up to the general and asked if he'd like a Care package and if there was anything she could do for him.

Delighted with the package, he thanked her and said, "Ma'am, as long as I'm here, my troops will think I'm trying to keep an eye on them.  They've got enough on their minds as it is, and I don't want them to be intimidated by my presence.  If you had just someplace I could wait in private, I'd appreciate it."

She found him an empty office, and he gratefully waited for the plane to arrive.

It's easy, when surrounded by Brass, to get "intimidated" and forget that, really, these guys are just somebody's dumb old big brothers.

Bush was always a little bit in awe of his generals.

And while Obama has the deep respect that their rank and experience affords them, he does not lose sight of what he wants to accomplish and how he wants things to change in Afghanistan.  There is no way he'd hand it over to somebody like, say, Patton, when what he really needs is an Eisenhower.  (Yeah, that's a very broad metaphor.  Please don't provide a lengthy history lesson on the two generals in the comment section, 'kay?  Let's stick to this war for now.)

A couple of quotes given by Gen. McChrystal to the Wall Street Journal are instructive in that vein, I think, in how he has changed his view of warfare to suit the new circumstance:

 

After watching the U.S. try and fail for years to put down insurgencies in both countries, Gen. McChrystal said he believes that to win in Afghanistan, "You're going to have to convince people, not kill them.

"Since 9/11, I have watched as America tried to first put out this fire with a hammer, and it doesn't work," he said last week at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. "Decapitation strategies don't work."

 

Soundbite-quotes make good copy, but McChrystal is backing up his words with his actions, according to this piece in the New York Times:

 

The new American commander in Afghanistan has been given carte blanche to handpick a dream team of subordinates, including many Special Operations veterans, as he moves to carry out an ambitious new strategy that envisions stepped-up attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotics networks.

The extraordinary leeway granted the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, underscores a view within the administration that the war in Afghanistan has for too long been given low priority and needs to be the focus of a sustained, high-level effort.

General McChrystal is assembling a corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years. That kind of commitment to one theater of combat is unknown in the military today outside Special Operations, but reflects an approach being imported by General McChrystal, who spent five years in charge of secret commando teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The new general's first task will be to report back, in 60 days from now, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, an assessment of his mission and plans for implementing President Obama's new strategy.

So...Just what IS that strategy:

 

IV.  Obama's Afghanistan

The first thing you have to understand about Obama's Afghanistan is that it is not just the MILITARY'S Afghanistan--this is a civilian undertaking, every bit as much.

And they are heading over to the country right along with the military.  According to the Washington Post:

 

A civilian "surge" of hundreds of additional U.S. officials in Afghanistan would accompany the already approved increase in U.S. troop levels there under a new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy being completed at the White House, according to administration officials...

Officials said the proposed strategy includes a more narrowly focused concentration on security, governance and local development in Afghanistan, with continued emphasis on rule-of-law issues and combating the narcotics trade. U.S. and British troops in the southern part of the country will attempt to oust entrenched Taliban forces, with an influx of reinforcements enabling them to retain control -- and help protect enhanced civilian operations -- until greatly expanded and sufficiently trained Afghan army and police forces are able to take their place.

 

It's not just us sending more folks from the State Dept., either:

 

In addition to increasing its own civilian component, the administration seeks better coordination among the many other governments and international and nongovernmental agencies operating in Afghanistan, often with different rules and objectives. The strategy proposals include a strengthening of the United Nations as a clearinghouse and overall coordinator of nonmilitary efforts, including the appointment of veteran U.S. diplomat Peter W. Galbraith as deputy to Norwegian Kai Eide, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

"This is a big deal," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity before the appointment is announced. "The Bush administration undermined and ignored the U.N., and we minimized our influence. But imagine, with all the money we pay and American troops on the line, not to have a senior person" at the top level of the U.N. effort. A U.N. official said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will announce Galbraith's appointment in "a matter of days."

 

In another piece, also by Karen De Young of the Post, the State Dept. has already begun to recruit diplomats from among its ranks for the new postings:

 

The State Department will significantly expand its presence in regional capitals in western and northern Afghanistan in coming months, part of the Obama administration's plans for a "surge" in civilians going to the country.

"As part of our expanding efforts in Afghanistan," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a cable sent Saturday to all Foreign Service officers, "the Department intends to create 14 additional FS positions in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif."

The cable called the jobs "priority" assignments and "new opportunities" for diplomats about to bid on new postings for later this year.

 

Even Bob Woodward, no doubt working on another war book, seems to get the message, in a lengthy piece for the Post this past weekend:

 

National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict.

The message seems designed to cap expectations that more troops might be coming, though the administration has not ruled out additional deployments in the future. Jones was carrying out directions from President Obama, who said recently, "My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops."

"This will not be won by the military alone," Jones said in an interview during his trip. "We tried that for six years." He also said: "The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed."

 

But what ABOUT the military?  Do THEY get it?  What about the 4,000 Marines that poured into the Helmand River Valley yesterday and today?  Did anyone send THEM the memo?

Apparently, yes.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes for the Post:

 

State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.

To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.

Once basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.

In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on "reining in the pit bulls."

"We're not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied. . . . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint," he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. "You're going to drink lots of tea. You're going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That's the reason why we're here."

 

Drinking tea and eating goat may not seem like what Marines signed up for, but you would be surprised.  They're there to protect the people, and if this is the best way to go about it, then so be it.

And for those who worry about the fact that Obama has sent more troops and fear he may send more, you need to realize that he's going about this with great care and thought.  Richard A. Oppel, Jr. wrote this for the Times:

 

The 21,000 additional American troops that Mr. Obama authorized after taking office in January almost precisely matches the original number of additional troops that President George W. Bush sent to Iraq two years ago. It will bring the overall American deployment in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 troops. But Mr. Obama avoided calling it a surge and resisted sending the full reinforcements initially sought by military commanders.

Instead, Mr. Obama chose to re-evaluate troop levels over the next year, officials said. The Obama administration has said that the additional American commitment has three main strategies for denying havens for the Taliban and Al Qaeda: training Afghan security forces, supporting the weak central Afghan government in Kabul and securing the population.

 

Even the manner in which the military is deploying is being adjusted to Obama's strategy.  Consider this from the Post on how the 82nd Airborne is reconfiguring its troops:

 

The extra 4,000 U.S. troops, expected to deploy in early fall, are to fill that gap. In a sign of the new importance the administration is placing on the mission, a brigade of the Army's vaunted 82nd Airborne Division is being broken up into 10-to-14-member advisory teams, a Pentagon official said. Until now, the military has relied heavily on inexperienced National Guardsmen to fill out the teams.

"The change couldn't be more dramatic," said retired Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan defense think tank. "The 82nd Airborne Division is the nation's shock force."

"We want to move as aggressively and as quickly as possible to build up the Afghan national army," one administration official said. "It's much cheaper in the long run to train Afghans to fight" than to send U.S. forces "halfway around the world."

 

And finally, what do all these policy changes mean to the men and women on the ground who are charged with implementing them?

I'm not talking about the generals.  I'm talking about the enlisted men and women, the first and second lieutenant platoon leaders, the captain and major company commanders--these are the TRUE tip of the spear, and if THEY don't get it, NOBODY does.

This is what makes Kristen Henderson's article, "A Change in Mission," which appeared in the New York Times Magazine on June 21, so fascinating to me.

Henderson is married to a Navy chaplain.  Navy chaplains do not always spend their time in which they are deployed on-board gigantic ships.  They also deploy with combat Marines and minister to those guys right in the thick of things.  Henderson is, herself, no slouch as a war correspondent--I suspect that the Marines cooperate far more with a female war correspondent if she's married to a Navy chaplain who has, himself, deployed.  They realize that she speaks their language and understands their world better than most.

For this piece, she was front and center on one of the many isolated outposts that our soldiers and Marines have defended so bravely and with so little support for so many years. 

Her writing makes you feel the sweat and the fear.

First Lieutenant Arthur Karell, who she profiles in the piece, is Harvard-educated and was Wall Street-employed before he enlisted in the Marines.  During his deployment, he has seen a great deal of combat under hardscrabble conditions, but it doesn't stop there.  He also spends much of his time sitting in dirt floors with villagers, drinking sweet tea and talking to them about what they need, what they expect, what are their complaints, and how he can help.

One of his biggest frustrations was that, once they pulled out and headed for home, all their hard work in securing the area would be lost--which is why he was elated when, after Obama was elected, his unit got the news that reinforcements would be replacing them, this time with the helicopters as well as civilian support that they had not had during his time in Afghanistan.

He told Henderson that, just seeing what one platoon could accomplish all by itself, he had great hope that with the new strategy, some real change might take place in that country.

Which is one of many reasons that, even though his old Wall Street firm thew him a party when his enlistment ended and offered him his old job back--he chose to re-enlist instead.

This is a man who, only a year before, had ordered his men to fix bayonets on their rifles--because they were expecting the combat to be that close, deadly, and terrifying.

If a young man like that--only 26 years old--can have that kind of hope, that kind of optimism in the fact of President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan, then I don't hardly see how the rest of us can fail him.

Let's just give this thing a chance to work.  Those guys who've been stranded forgotten on top of remote mountaintop outposts for eight years now deserve at least that much.

If it fails, it fails.

But it is worth at least a chance.

It's all our guys ever asked of us, and it's the least we owe them, and the least we owe the people of Afghanistan.

 

"She really was someone who could look fear in the face and conquer it...When all of us reflect on our own lives, the emotion which controls us so greatly is fear.  I think that was Farrah's message to us in the way she conducted her own journey, is:

"Be as fearless as you can be.  Don't be intimidated by fear.  Keep marching forward.  Do what you think is right.  Fight for what you want to fight for, whether you are losing the battle or not."  (emphasis mine)

--Dr. Lawrence Piro, President, Angeles Clinic and Research Institute, personal physician to Farrah, in an interview with Barbara Walters for ABC.

 

When I remember Farrah Fawcett, I don't think of her dazzling smile or the famous poster in the red bathing suit.  I don't even think of her tabloid personal life--her romantic tumult, her drug-addicted son--I think of her talent, and her guts, and I'm not just talking about the three years she spent battling incurable cancer.

In order to truly understand Farrah's courage, you have to take her life in context of growing up in the 50's and coming of age in the '60's and '70's, especially if you were a pretty girl from the South. 

Pretty girls coming of age in those days were taught to be pleasers.  They were taught to always smile, no matter what, to defer to men in every way, to mask their own intelligence if it meant that other people (read, men) would be threatened by that, and that the only ambition suitable for the time was to find a good husband to take care of you, settle down, and care for him and your houseful of children for the rest of your life. 

If, like Farrah, you were truly beautiful, you were supposed to parlay that beauty into the position it afforded: choice.  By that I mean, you were supposed to choose the man with the most earning potential, the most political power, the most POTENTIAL.  (He, in turn, was to be commended for winning the hand of the prettiest girl in the room.)

You weren't supposed to have any potential of your own, beyond being pretty and pleasing for him.

After a beautiful girl got married, she was supposed to "represent" her husband by how she conducted herself, how she helped propel his career, how she kept her home and raised her children.  If she did everything right, that meant a fine home in the best neighborhood, kids who qualified for the best schools, and so on.

Even when she gave birth, she was not identified in the paper by her own name, but by her husband's.  In fact, for her entire life, her identity was supposed to be a reflection of her husband's, and later, her children's.

It wasn't just pretty girls from the South who rebelled against this corset of an existence.

(Full disclosure: My despairing mother enrolled me in "Charm School" when I was 12, in hopes I would learn how to do things like walk straight with a book on my head, sit properly like a "lady," with my hands lying passively in my lap and my ankles crossed demurely, and deal with any disaster with a smile.  So, in the class, I kept up a steady stream of sarcastic wisecracks which, ultimately, got me kicked out, much to my mom's chagrin.) 

Anyway, as everyone knows, Boomer women rebelled big-time in the '60's and 70's, but it took a couple of decades for their battles to make the kinds of changes that people who were born in the '70's now take for granted.

So, at the time, American culture was still dominated by male-centric themes.  (In that respect, it still is in many ways.  Check out the latest blockbuster movies and see how many have female leads, or females in any serious capacity beyond being The Girlfriend or The Tortured Victim Awaiting Rescue.)

No one could capitalize on the male-dominated themes better than Aaron Spelling, and when he created "Charlie's Angels" and cast three hot, incredibly sexy unknowns in the lead roles, he created a phenomenon that comes along once a decade, if that.

Those of us who were budding feminists enjoyed the program simply because it showed women being brave and intrepid and solving the crime and dodging danger and saving victims--even if they did it in bikinis.  Our husbands and boyfriends enjoyed it for the obvious reasons.

And nobody was a bigger hit than Farrah.  She was a terrible actress at that time, but there was something about her, a quality that went beyond sexiness to seduce us all.  Part of it was the dazzling smile, of course, but it was more than that.  She was fun.  She was playful.  She didn't take the part seriously because she knew nobody else did, so in a way, she was winking and nudging her audience as if to say, "It's okay.  I get the joke, too."

We all fell in love--by the bazillions--so when, after only one season on the program, she suddenly quit the show, it caused a cultural tsunami that makes Jon and Kate's divorce seem like child's play.

You have to understand how hard that was for her.  Aaron Spelling was the most powerful man in Hollywood at the time and had limitless legal options to destroy her, which is what he tried to do.  She was still under contract, and there were suits and countersuits that would tie up much of her time and most of her fortune for years.

Not only that, but because she'd signed a contract with the program for several years, then she was not permitted to work in the business for years after that.  Not just because of the obvious reasons, but because Spelling was so powerful that nobody really wanted to cross him.

Farrah Fawcett's decision to leave Charlies Angels was part of a multi-pronged effort to reinvent herself and rechannel her career.  She also fired her agent and her manager, and left her husband, Lee Majors, who was himself a huge TV star at the time.

She could see that if she had stayed with the TV show season after season, she would be branded as the T-and-A girl, the ingenue, the sexpot lead.  And she knew how short the careers are for girls who base their careers on that, and that alone.

That was not what Farrah wanted.  She wanted to be taken seriously as an actor, and she knew that the longer she stayed entangled in the Spelling spiderweb, the less chance she'd have to achieve that goal.

During her time out of the limelight, she studied acting, and she read, and she painted and sculpted, and she tried to get people to see past the hair and the teeth.

In an interview with Barbara Walters in 1980, her famous hair was straight, as if she'd just gotten out of bed and run a brush through it.  She said that her looks were sometimes "a curse," which I'm sure most viewers took as arrogance but was in fact, raw honesty.

When Hollywood failed to give her any leeway, she left for New York, where she got the lead of a small play off-Broadway called "Extremities," which is about a rape victim who, several years later, encounters her rapist--who does not remember her at all--when he shows up at her home in an official capacity as some kind of repairman.  (Been a while since I've seen it.)

She turns the tables on him by using his short memory against him, luring him into a trap she sets for him in which she keeps him imprisoned and proceeds to torture him in revenge.

For the part, Farrah cut off her famous hair in a short shoulder-bob, and delivered the performance of her life; it was searing, raw, almost too painful to watch, and so powerful that it landed her the lead in the TV movie based on the play.

That role relaunched her career and garnered her an Emmy nomination--the first of three. 

After that, she played her most memorable part as a wife who is so horrifically abused by her husband that she sets fire to him in bed.  Based on a true story, in which the woman was not convicted for the crime because the jury was so horrified by the details of her abuse at her husband's hands, changed public discourse on the battered wife and put Farrah on the map as a talent to be reckoned with.

Her next Emmy nomination came for playing the lead role in Ann Rule's "Small Sacrifices," about a woman who killed her three children (actually one survived, but barely), because her boyfriend didn't like kids.

These roles were gritty and tough, and for the better part of a decade, Fawcett held our attention in one TV-movie after another, proving herself time and again, but unfortunately, that's not what interested the tabloids.

Yes, I would like to have seen Farrah be as forceful and tough in her personal life as she was in her career.  She got involved with more than one man who turned out to be abusive.  All I can say is, it takes a long time to throw off that pleaser-trait that's been so closely bred into you throughout your childhood and adolescence, especially where men are concerned.

She did eventually kick them all out, living on her own for years until her longtime-love, Ryan O'Neal was himself diagnosed with lieukemia eight years ago and then her own devastating illness, after which he never left her side.

As Farrah aged, the scripts that were offered her were fewer and further between, (a fate typical of most actresses), leaving her in a virtual career-desert throughout most of her 40's, so in typical Farrah fashion, she threw it all back in their faces by posting for Playboy magazine at 48 and again at 50--the bestselling covers the magazine ever had.

You have to understand something here.  Before Farrah, beautiful actresses did not take parts where they chopped off their trademark hair and allowed the camera to show them ravaged.  It just was not done.

Years later, when Charleze Theron gained weight and butched her way to an Oscar by playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, she had Farrah Fawcett to thank for giving her the courage to do it.

And see, before Farrah, women in their late 40's and early 50's wouldn't have been caught DEAD in Playboy magaine or anywhere else that displayed their bodies.

It just was not done.

But Farrah did it.  She lived her life on her own terms--mistakes and all.

The David Letterman show was a disastrous mistake.  Ryan O'Neal, her lover of 30 years, insists that Farrah was not drunk or stoned or on any kind of prescription drugs when she made the appearance as a spaced-out aging beauty queen who could barely hold a thought. 

She told him, he says, that she thought it would be funny.  It was--but at her expense.

A few more years passed, but Farrah refused to go to the elephant burial grounds of all aging ingenues.

She produced, directed, and starred in a show for the Playboy network in which she painted giant murals with her own nude body, covered in paint, while O'Neal sat nearby and watched.

It was outrageous; it was bodacious; it was glorious.

Until that special, most people did not even realize that Farrah Fawcett was a gifted artist in her own right, a sculpter of sweeping sensuality and delicate beauty.

She just kept fighting, you see, long after all the others had given up.

When Fawcett was diagnosed in 2006, at the age of 59, with a very rare form of cancer, she did something that might have struck so many as unexpected but really wasn't if you'd been paying attention to more than just the smile and the body: she picked up a handheld video camera and took it along with her to chemotherapy and doctor's visits, eventually enlisting friends to help.

They told her she was going to die but she was so sure that she could beat it that she thought, this way, she could demystify so much that terrifies the rest of us about cancer, maybe help fellow sufferers by giving them courage and heart for their own battles.

When her magnificent hair began falling out in huge gobs, she filmed it.

When chemo made her vomit, the camera did not turn away and neither did she.

When her hair was gone for good, she showed off her brave bald head and kept on fighting.

And when the doctors told her that the tumors had spread and spread and that, even though she'd been feeling so much better, she was not, in fact, going to beat it, she cried and did not ask the cameras to quit filming.

This was Farrah, the REAL Farrah, the Farrah who'd been there all along for anyone to see who'd been looking beyond the red bathing suit.

(The resulting documentary special, Farrah's Story, is going to be re-aired on NBC tonight, I believe.  You'll have to channel-check because it won't be on any TV guide schedules.) 

Farrah Fawcett was, arguably in her prime, the most beautiful woman in the world.  But her beauty went far beyond the smile and the hair and the body.  It went soul-deep.  She was funny and fiesty and brave and talented and gentle.  She loved her family and friends with ferocity and passion, taking time even in her dying days to hand-write letters of love to each of them in her graceful, flowing script.

We can learn so much more from Farrah than how to fix our hair.

As her grieving doctor so eloquently put it, we can learn to fight for what we want to fight for, whether we are winning the battle or not.

Good night, sweet beautiful Farrah.

And thank you.

It's Father's Day, and for most of us, that means prowling the greeting-card aisles of discount stores, maybe looking for a gift, too, and if we don't live nearby, making sure we call Dad on the day.  If we do live near, we try to visit, or maybe there's a big family to-do involving food and gifts and laughter.

But for a small sliver of our population, Father's Day is the most depressing day of the year.  In the weeks leading up to the day, the people in this group try to avoid the greeting-card section, because they won't be selecting any Father's Day cards this year.  Or next year.

Or ever.

When the slow blue sedan pulls up in front of a house or apartment complex, and a couple of soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors gets out, followed usually by a chaplain or other counselor, the family inside is usually going about their normal day.  Kids might be running through the house or playing in the yard.  A mom or a dad might be just getting out of the car from running errands, or just scraping the car keys off the kitchen table to leave for church, or a ball game, or work.  They might be watching TV or getting ready for dinner.

They are never ready.  No one is ever ready.

My own dad is a retired Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant who requested (more like demanded) to serve in the Vietnam war, even though he was 40 and had five children, including a newborn baby daughter.  He came back whole and hardy, but over the course of his career, one of the jobs he held was as the notification officer.

Sitting in that car in front of the house, knowing that you are about to destroy a whole host of lives, knowing that whoever answers the door is going to scream or burst into tears or yell at you or just stand silently, gripping the doorframe as if it were a life preserver on a huge unforgiving ocean is one of the toughest jobs in the military service.

It never gets any easier, that job.  You never get used to it.

One of my husband's brothers is also retired; he was a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army Special Forces, and over the course of his distinguished career, one of his tasks for a period of time was to attend every funeral of a fallen service member.

This was, of course, before the two wars we have going right now have taken so many thousands of lives that no one man could ever attend all the funerals.

This is a man who served in the Balkans and at the beginning of the Afghanistan war, he deployed there as well, and yet, the father of two sons himself, attending these funerals was one of the most difficult jobs he ever had over his decades in the military.

Now, both of his sons are active-duty.  One has already deployed to Afghanistan and another to Iraq.  Though they both returned from their deployments sound of body and mind, either one of them could be called upon to deploy again, and again, as so many are these days.

And every time you deploy again to a war zone, you are playing Russian Roulette that THIS time, you won't make it back.

At dinner tables all over the country on this Father's Day there are empty chairs that will never again be filled by a father.  (And, we must not forget--mothers as well.)

Many thousands of children have been cheated out of having a Daddy or Mama watch them grow up, because of these wars and the multiple deployments.  They have to endure Father's Days or Mother's Days in silence and loneliness.

And that does not even COUNT the men who, today, must suffer through another Father's Day without their beloved sons or daughters; who must live with the fact that they outlived their own children.

There can be no harsher fate.

When a fallen servicemember is laid to rest under full military honors, a tri-folded flag is presented to the spouse and children, or to the parents or other family member, who are told:

"On behalf of a grateful nation, I present this flag as a token of our appreciation for the faithful and selfless service of your loved one for this country."

"On behalf of a grateful nation."

But I wonder...Just how grateful IS this nation?

Comedian Stephen Colbert's recent week in Iraq brought him the lowest ratings of his program's run, particularly among the coveted 18-34 age group.

Evening news programs ignore either war unless there is some gory B-roll they can air following some exciting battle or other.

When troops come home, when they get out of the service, when they look for jobs, they have a much harder time finding work--their unemployment is more than 11 percent now.  When they do interview for positions, they find indifferent employers who know nothing about the war and care even less.  Sometimes they even encounter hostility, as if every last one of them is a deranged Rambo, looking for a workplace to shoot up.

And when they die, nobody outside their family seems to notice or care.

You don't even see very many yellow ribbon magnets anymore.  At least with those, people could pretend that they really cared about the troops, because hey, they were patriotic, weren't they?

In fact, the entire war, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq, has become to most people something unreal, like, say, a movie or TV show.

Or video game.

Did you know that the Battle of Fallujah, (given the dramatic military-style name of "Operation Phantom Fury") which cost this country more lives than at any other time during the entire six-year-and-counting war, the definitive battle of the war in which my own son's Marine unit received more awards for bravery and heroism than the entire U.S. military, has been turned into a video game?

According to Newsweek magazine, a video game is in development by a guy named Peter Tampte of Atomic Games, called, "Six Days In Fallujah."

"Tamte is not above triviality," states the article. "A second company he runs, Destineer, makes games with titles like Indy 500 and Fantasy Aquarium. But the 41-year-old executive says he's now attempting something more serious: a documentary-style reconstruction that will be so true to the original battle, gamers will almost feel what it was like to fight in Fallujah in November 2004."

Now, in all fairness to Tampte, it must be stated that he invited a number of Fallujah Battle veterans to help him provide that realism:

"Capt. Read Omohundro, who led a Marine company in Fallujah and lost 13 men there, acts as a kind of quality-control manager for Six Days. "I'll say to them, no, that guy has to be facing the other way. This piece of ammunition doesn't blow up so fast, it only detonates this much. You can't be standing next to it when it goes off or you'll become a casualty." In Atomic's conference room, Omohundro recently described to artists and designers what Fallujah looked like when tanks kicked up dust and debris. "It's not sand like at the beach," he said. "It's that talcum-powder crap. It gets into everything. It just hangs around and you're waiting forever for it to go away."

I do not fault the soldiers and Marines who have helped this man develop his video game.  Just about every young male in existence today loves video games, and gaming provides a welcome escape for the troops who are fighting these wars.  When they come back from missions, many of them play video games to take their minds off the stress of combat.

But with all due respect to Capt. Omohundro and the others who helped Tampte, I believe they were used.  They were thinking in terms of "getting it right," which I completely understand, because if you watch any war movie, say, with most any veteran, they will get immensely frustrated at the mistakes that have been made portraying a war they themselves actually fought in.  And nothing means more to them than seeing a movie like, for instance, Saving Private Ryan, that has taken meticulous detail to get it right.

But for Tampte, let's face it, this wasn't about realism.  It was about making money. And lots of it, apparently, because the project had the backing of $20 million from investors.

While he's busy explaining that the company has been working to develop this game for four years, those of us with emotional investments in that battle are doing the math and realizing that the bodies were barely cold before a video game company was hurrying to capitalize on their sacrifices.

And everything was rocking along great guns...until a source unexpected to Tampte reared its collective head and said, Hold on.

Gold Star families.

Back during World War II, those with loved ones who were serving placed tiny flags in their windows that contained either blue stars, for each family member who was serving, or gold stars, for each family member who had been killed in action.

The Gold Star families who lost loved ones in Fallujah in November of 2004, do not find the deaths of their loved ones entertaining.

"The war is not a game, and neither was the Battle of Fallujah," the group Gold Star Families Speak Out said in a statement. "For Konami and Atomic Games to minimize the reality of an ongoing war and at the same time profit off the deaths of people close to us by making it entertaining is despicable."

"Konami is a Japanese company that distributes and underwrites mostly family-oriented games with names like DanceDanceRevolution and Karaoke Revolution. Two weeks after the publicity event, Konami's Los Angeles-based executives told Tamte in a conference call that the company was ending its involvement with Six Days. Atomic would have to find a new distributor. (Konami would not return newsweek's calls.)

"Tracy Miller, whose son, Cpl. Nicholas Ziolkowski, was killed Nov. 14, was among the Gold Star family members behind the letter. Ziolkowski had been attached to Omohundro's Bravo Company. He and other snipers had taken up position at the Grand Mosque in downtown Fallujah that morning. Dexter Filkins, a New York Timesreporter who embedded with Bravo Company, wrote that Ziolkowski had removed his helmet to get a better look in his scope when a bullet caught him in the head."

The thing is...if, during the course of the game, a "sniper" kills an American troop with a bullet in the head...Is that Cpl. Ziolkowski?

The game's creators insist that the answer would be "no," but how many Americans were killed by sniper fire during that gruesome, horrific battle?  Or small-arms fire, or rockets, or IEDs?

My son was the first one to reach his buddy, Rex, when a sniper shot him in the head during his second deployment.  Do you think HE would enjoy playing a VIDEO GAME depicting such a thing?

Dustin and I discussed this game after we'd each heard about it. 

"It bothers me," he said.  "I tried to tell myself that there are games out there about, say, D-Day, and I never said anything or thought anything about it...but this...It really bothers me."

I said, "Honey, that's because D-Day took place 65 years ago.  The Iraq War is STILL TAKING PLACE.  There are men and women who are still dying there, and those who fought in Fallujah and buried buddies are not only still dealing with that, but many of them are still in the service and are re-deploying.  Making a GAME out of their sacrifices is just wrong."

There is more bothering the Gold Star families than the lack of respect they feel from the development of this game.

(Tracy) Miller teaches a popular course on the 1960s, including the antiwar movement. She worries that Six Days, precisely because it aims to re-create the Fallujah battle so realistically, will further desensitize youngsters to the horrors of war. And she's concerned that insurgents will learn about the operational procedures of American troops.

Ahhh, and that's the kicker.  Why worry about a real war--or, God forbid, why sign up to fight it yourself--if all you have to do is sit down in the comfort of your own home and PRETEND you are fighting it?

Especially if the soldiers and Marines who are fighting and dying with the press of a button at your fingertips?  They're not REAL.

"...how can the portrayal be accurate if a player can manipulate the events? David Waddington, an assistant professor of education at Concordia University in Montreal who has written articles about the ethics of videogames, says they cannot convey important aspects of real life, including complex characters. "You do have characters in a videogame in some sense, but ... character development isn't very robust. So you don't sympathize with characters very much."

In other words, that dark blue sedan is never going to pull up to YOUR front door.

Making it "realistic" does not, in my opinion, help people really understand.

How can you POSSIBLY understand without the FEAR?  The gut-wrenching, bowel-clenching terror of heading out on patrol each and every day, street by street, house by house, room by room?  Who's gonna get it today?  You?  Your buddy?  Your platoon leader?   They reference Dexter Filkins in that article, who was, in my opinion, one of the finest war correspondents over there.  He wrote for the New York Times, and I used to search for his stuff every day and read it.  He went right into the mouth of the beast and he was respected by the troops.  He and one outfit got pinned down by insurgents in one hellish day that saw the deaths of several of the men he was with.  When his photographer e-mailed back some photos to the Times and they put them up on their website, families protested, and he was yanked out of Iraq within days.  He wrote a book about his experiences there, and how, over time, he just slowly lost his mind.   You can't put that in a game.  

And, ultimtaely, it is a GAME.  What I resent in the first place is the almost orgasmic delight the media had in playing out this war through cool graphics and intrepid camera crews in the early days, like it was some kind of neato John Wayne movie (who did not, himself, fight in World War II even though he was old enough) or, yeah, a video game.  

What that did was give the war a feel to the public that it WAS a game or a movie and somehow not really real.  Casualties were hidden from camera crews and embedded coverage was carefully controlled, and the whole thing just seemed like a giant PR project.   

Slap a yellow magnet on your car and you, too, can support the troops!!!  

Like a football game.  America vs. Terrorists.  Popcorn!  Beer!  Rah-rah-yay!  

Until the Battle of Fallujah.  And that changed everything because it was bloody and horrible, and everyone--even field doctors and medics--were changed forever by the things they saw in Fallujah.  

I'll never forget Dustin telling me about finding two insurgents in a mosque and rounding them up, taking them prisoner.  "I looked into the eyes of one of the men," he said, "and he was absolutely terrified.  And I wondered if I looked the same way to him."  

Until those avid gamers know what it's like for bullets to come right at them out of the TV screens and blow the head off the buddy sitting on the couch next to them, then there IS no "realism."  Because that's the only "realism" that matters to me.  

Mr. Tampte's investors pulled out their financial backing after the Gold Star families formally protested the game, and he has not, as yet, been able to line up new ones.  He is struggling to save his business, and bewildered because he's convinced himself that what he was really doing was "honoring" the troops who served in Fallujah.  

If he really wants to honor them, he should attend a few funerals.  He should stand right behind a weeping family member who is handed the tri-corner flag--close enough that he can hear, "On behalf of a grateful nation..."  

He should go home, then, with some of the widows and widowers, watch their suffering children in their subdued and silent play.  

He should watch them walk past the greeting-card aisle on Mother's Day or on Father's Day as they hurry past, averting their eyes, fighting back tears.  

War is not a game.  Father's Day with an empty chair at the table is all too real.

I'm not proud of this.

But if I want to deal with a difficult issue honestly, I have to tell the truth.

Back in 1972, while I was still in college, and after a series of personal crises had left me rudderless, I was befriended by a group of young people who were active in evangelical Christian circles; two of whom had attended Bob Jones University.  (Yes, THAT Bob Jones.  The one that prohibited inter-racial dating as recently as this decade.)

In my previous post, "How Religion Ruined Politics and Politics Ruined Religion," I wrote about that time in my life, so I'm not going to go into any more detail here, but suffice it to say that I was very lonely, and those friendships met a need at the time.

That spring, I was deeply worried about an old and dear friend with whom I'd had a romantic relationship, off and on, for years (at the time, it was off), because he was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.  When I found out that he had, indeed, returned safely from his tour, had rotated out of the Army, and was at home before leaving for a new life in West Texas, I traveled to my hometown to visit him.

I can still remember how he looked then, how broad and strong his shoulders were from months spent humping a rucksack through the jungle, how sexy in his cowboy hat.  He was 6'4" tall and I was a foot shorter.  I was visiting with his mom in the living room when he drove up into the driveway in the new, gold, '72 El Camino he'd bought, and I ran out and threw my arms around his neck.  He hoisted me up in one arm and carried me effortlessly into the house.

We visited a while with his mom, and then he had some things to bring in from the truck, so I followed him out, and he handed me a bag to carry.

We were happy and laughing, and I grinned up at him and said, "Who was yo niggah last year?"

That was a cute little saying I'd picked up from some of my new friends.  I'm ashamed to admit that I did not think anything of it at the time.

This, from a young woman who had black friends and who had worked and written about civil rights while in college.  Who'd been outraged at incidents of racism her whole life.

It would be easy to blame my new friends, but they hadn't made the remark.  I had. 

Thoughtlessly, stupidly.

My friend, Kent, stopped what he was doing, stood up to his full height, and in a stern voice I'm sure he normally reserved for clueless privates, he said, "That's not very funny.  It's a terrible thing to say."

And when he turned away, I stood there, dumbstruck at the truth of his words, my own humiliation, and inner self-rage that I had fallen into such a careless, thoughtless remark so easily, when I thought I knew myself better than that.

Later, I learned that in the month before Kent had departed Vietnam for home, they'd pulled him out of the jungle and sent him to a rear area, where one of his tasks had been to quell civil rights unrest among the men.  He did so with the help of a black sergeant who was as big as he was, a man for whom the young lieutenant had felt nothing but respect, admiration, and affection.

I never made that remark--or any other like it--again.

Eventually, I found some new friends.

Two years later, I married Kent, and have remained married to him for a very happy 35 years.

I'm recalling that cheek-burning incident now in order to use myself as a prime example of what I call "hidden hate speech."

Most of us who have any kind of functioning brain cells know how dangerous hate speech can be, whether spewed over the airwaves, blasted onto the Web, or circulated in nasty e-mails.  Especially following the recent presidential campaign and inauguragion of the country's first black president, we've all recoiled in horror at some of the things we've seen and heard.

Most of us who love our president, supported him, and voted for him, worry a great deal about his personal safety.

Newsworthy tragedies like the recent murder of an abortion doctor only reinforce our anxiety about rising hate speech and hate crimes in this country.

Like one Supreme Court justice's definition of pornography, we all know hate speech when we hear it.

But sometimes, we don't know it when we speak it ourselves.

Or worse, we know it when we hear it, but we say nothing.

Understand that I'm not talking about just African Americans here.  Hate speech and hate crimes spread like bloodstains and affect all sorts of minorities--from Latinos who catch the brunt of illegal alien-hate, to gays who are the victims of homophobia, to Muslim-Americans, who must endure the suspicions of a population conditioned by the previous administration to think of all of them as terrorists.

Ever since Barack Obama gained prominence with his eloquence and powerful speaking ability, his opponents and enemies have dismissed some of his most stirring speeches as "just words."

And yet, ask most any American what he or she thinks of, say, the Gettysburg Address, and see them grow misty-eyed.

Ask if they've heard the words, "I have a dream."

Ask if they're familiar with, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Ask if they've ever studied the words, "All we have to fear, is fear itself."

And ask how they felt when the leader of the free world, when he was questioned about the growing strength of an insurgency in Iraq, famously replied, "Bring it on."

Words matter.

It wasn't until I moved to West Texas and began bringing up my two children, who are 31 and 29 now, that I realized how much words--and the actions behind them--matter.  Most of the prejudice I encountered was directed toward the Mexican-American population because, I suspect, they were a larger minority out here than the African-Americans.

Still, racism seemed to be all around us.  In jokes, for instance.

Or, careless remarks (some not-so-careless) like the one I'd made years ealier.  

When my kids started school, I really had to swim against the current to encourage them to make inter-racial friendships, but I made it clear that any and all of their friends were welcome in our home at any time.  The first time my son, who was six, had a sleepover with a friend away from home, it was with a Hispanic family.

But it wasn't until they got into high school that I began to feel the sting that hidden hate speech and subtle racism can bring.  By that time, many of my son's best friends, for instance, were Hispanic.

And it started to cost US, his parents, friendships with some (I emphasize: SOME) of our white friends.

We didn't realize it at first.  It took a little time.  But gradually, we began to figure it out.

Not that we gave a great big flying damn.

During that time, I had a weekly newspaper column in the local paper called, "Country Life," about bringing up kids in the country, but I wrote about many things.  One time I wrote about gays, about how, basically, they are people too, how they're not pedophiles, and so on, and I talked about my married friends, Steve and Scott.

The next day, I got a two-sentence letter in the snail-mail from my publisher, firing me. 

He said, "Thank you for your promptness," on account of how I'd never missed a deadline in 16 years.  And that, as they say, was that.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it's not easy, in a social setting, to do what my then-future-husband did to me:  Stand up straight and say, in effect, That's a terrible thing to say.

Psychologists say that, from an evolutionary standpoint, just about the greatest fear that men and women have is not the fear of death.

It is the fear of being shunned by society.

This is because, when primitive mankind traveled together from cave to cave in tribes, the worst punishment that could be bestowed upon a tribal member was to be ostracized--shunned--from the tribe, because to be kicked out of the cave was, most likely, to die.

This is one primeval reason that so many people fear public speaking.  The fear of making a fool of one's self, or of being judged as somehow unfit for the tribe, is a deep fear.

In this time of the Internet and polarization, many of us have sort of drifted into one sort of chosen tribe or another, based on our common mutual interests and points of view.

I happen to hang out with a kind of tribe who wouldn't dream of telling a racist joke or making a stupid remark like the one I made back in college in my bonehead days.

So, what happens is, we get lulled into a certain complacency, and by that I mean, we don't tend to encounter prejudice on an overt basis so much in our daily lives, partly because it has been legislated out of the workplace (as one example) and partly because we don't see it in our friends.

But prejudice--and the malevolence behind it--has only gone underground, so to speak.  Into the closet.  It's hidden, but it's there, and if we had any doubts about that (which I never did), we sure saw it during the recent campaign, and here again, with the nomination battle over Judge Sotomayor who, you may remember, is "not too smart," even though she was valedictorian of her high school senior class, won the Pyne Prize for academic excellence at Princeton, and edited the Yale Law Review.

(I don't recall anyone ever saying that John Roberts wasn't too smart, and his credentials were less impressive than hers are now.)

When tragedies like Dr. Tiller's murder happen, we recoil in collective horror, but we should not be surprised, because the truth is that the number of hate groups out there, and the places where hate speech is easily disseminated to an eager audience, has gone up FIFTY PERCENT since 2000.

So...what can we do about it?  How can we fight back against hate speech?  How can we, figuratively if not literally, stand up strong and say, "That's a terrible thing to say"?

For many years now, I have been a supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and I can think of no better place to start rethinking hate speech.

Once, a commenter on one of my posts singled out the SPLC as a "radical left" group.

Oh for heaven's sake.  That's hogwash.  Utter nonsense.

Begun back in the '70's as a civil rights law firm by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, the SPLC branched out in the '80's by taking on the foundational hate-group of all time, the KKK.  When years of criminal prosecutions had resulted in few--if any--verdicts and/or sentences against KKK members who'd participated in assassinations, lynchings, beatings, kidnappings, and murders, the SPLC began to bring lawsuits against individuals and groups in CIVIL court.  The resulting cash settlements have broken the back of many of the largest, most powerful hate-groups in existence in this country, by simply bankrupting them.

Consequently, they began a serious effort to monitor and catalogue hate groups and hate crimes nation-wide, and their data base grew to be so impressive that the FBI began to consult them, which it continues to do so, to this day.

Their quarterly Intelligence Report puts together a comprehensive study of many of those crimes, the crime trends, successful prosecutions, and progress made in combating hate crimes, and is subscribed to by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the country.  I get mine in the mail, but you can read it online anytime.

To my way of thinking, nothing the SPLC has done in its distinguished history can touch the work they've done through schools all over the country, with their free Teaching Tolerance classroom materials.  Through grants, multi-media kits, handbooks, and their monthly magazine, Teaching Tolerance provides useful classroom materials that enable teachers to enhance their students' understanding of the cultural history and accomplishments of many minority groups and to increase their sensitivity to forms of bigotry such as homophobia.

Located next to the SPLC center in Montgomery, Alabama (which has been bombed once, by the way, and Morris Dees deals with daily threats on his life), is the Civil Rights Memorial, designed by Vietnam memorial artist Maya Lin, and contains the names of those who fought and died for civil rights.  Water flows over the names 24 hours a day, and the site is open to all for quiet contemplation.

Also located at the SPLC headquarters is a 20-by-40 foot Wall of Tolerance, in which the names of thousands of supporters who have pledged to take a stand against hate, injustice, and intolerance and to work for justice, equality, and human rights are available on an Interactive display.  If you should ever get a chance to visit that wall in Montgomery, do me a favor and check it out.  You'll find my name among the number, and I may not get the chance in this lifetime to see it for myself.

In the meantime, there is another way you can stand strong against hate.  You can go to the SPLC "Stand Strong Against Hate" interactive map, which designates pinpoints in two colors.  The red dots indicate hate groups located in this country.

The green dots and squares represent men and women like you and me who have pledged to stand up whenever we see or hear acts of hate in our area.  When I entered my name and zip code for my own little green dot, up popped my home state of Texas, which, according to the site, hosts 66 hate groups.

And lots and lots of green. 

Another thing you can do is visit the SPLC homepage, (link provided above) and if you've got a few bucks to spare, I strongly encourage you to make a donation, because right now, there are more hate groups and hate crimes in this country than at any other time, and our president received more threats against his life in the days following his inauguration than any other president, according to the Secret Service.

If you haven't got any money to donate, that's fine.  All you have to do is speak out.  Words are free.

Words matter in this world.  Violent acts of hatred do not need to be confronted with further violent acts of hatred.

Violent words--no matter how well-meaning or couched in a joke--do not need to be confronted with violence, either.

Sometimes all it takes is a simple, "That's a terrible thing to say."

 

 

When I was in college back in the 70's, a series of personal and family tragedies that occurred back to back during my junior year left me emotionally shipwrecked and set apart from the vast majority of my classmates, whose biggest problem in life was what to wear to the spring formal or whether they'd pass an exam. 

Cut adrift from familiar shores, lost and alone, I floated into the current of the campus Christian evangelical community, and consequently accepted Christ as my personal savior and was baptised in a Southern Baptist church back home.

Because I never do anything halfway, I embraced my new life right down to my soul, so to speak, joining Campus Crusades for Christ, taking Bible courses as electives, going door to door saving souls, working as a "counselor" at Billy Graham movies, serving as a summer camp counselor at a Christian camp, dating seminary students, and after graduation, teaching at a private Christian academy in another state.

Because the Bible stated that "believers should not be yoked to non-believers," that meant freezing out many of my old friends, listening only to Christian music and reading Christian books, and so on.  Back then, Christianity had not yet become a multi-billion dollar industry, and so that dictate was harder than you might think.  I had to mix up my own cassette tapes of Christian music, although many of my friends frowned upon my collection of Mormon Tabernacle Choir music because everybody knew they were a cult and therefore, Satanic.

I'd hear stuff like that and just toss it off and not dwell on it too much.  I didn't think anyone who could make such astonishing music could be anything BUT close to God.  The lack of tolerance for even listening to their music baffled me, but I didn't argue about it.  I just privately played their soaring, blessed "Halleluyah Chorus" and didn't talk about it much.

And the popular self-help books I read, all about stuff like, how to submit myself to my lord and master--meaning, my future husband--well, that kinda bugged me too, but after all, I did want to find myself a good Christian husband, because every Singles Bible class I attended concentrated on husband-finding as if being a single woman were some sort of tragic disability.  You literally did think there was something wrong with you if you had no husband or marriage prospects on the near horizon, and so you took more Singles classes so you could figure out what you were doing wrong and fix it before all the Good Christian Men were taken.

But, basically, I was more of the intellectual Christian than the emotional one.  I didn't buy into the whole speaking-in-tongues and laying on of hands and other excesses of the faith.  In fact, I grew tired of the Baptists pretty quick because every single solitary sermon said the exact same thing, and so I found a nondenominational congregation near my campus and went three times a week.

Usually, I attended lectures where the speakers translated Bible verses from the original Hebrew or Aramaic, and I read bestselling Christian authors like C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, who were known as the philosophical vanguards of the faith, and who dealt in the Deeper Questions of life.  Some of their reading was dense, but that was the challenge and the joy and, I confess, gave me a bit of a feeling of superiority over those who didn't read much at all but who did things like, stop taking their epilepsy medicine because "Jesus is going to heal me."

(That guy was later found by police, wandering down the street in his underwear.)

I had a boyfriend who was a seminary student at a non-denominational institution that was--and is to this day--highly respected, and he and his friends and I would have many all-nighters debating such heavy theological issues as dispensationalism, predestination, literal-versus-symbolic interpretation of scripture, and so on.  I took a comprehensive Bible class in the New Testament from the Moody Bible Institute, another respected institution, by correspondence, and after a couple of years, I could hold my own with the best born-and-bred Bible thumpers, even if my family and old friends worried that I'd lost my mind.

In a way, I had.  I just didn't know it at the time.

The comedown, when it came, came hard and fast and violently.  Teaching at the Christian academy, it wasn't just the undercurrent of prejudice (only white students and faculty), or the haphazard educational standards or poor availability of textbooks and supplies--it was coming face to face with the thunderous judgementalism, hypocrisy, and mean-spiritedness that I encountered from colleagues with otherwise impeccable gospel standards. 

What that enviornment was doing to the students drove me to a near nervous breakdown and I quit at Christmas break, for my own sanity.  When, a few months later, I reconnected with an old and dear friend with whom I'd been romantically involved, off and on, for many years--before the whole evangelical thing--and decided to marry him, the reaction from my evangelical friends at my old Baptist church back home shocked me to my core.

Because he was a privately spiritual person but averse to organized religion, they deemed him a "nonbeliever."  When my pastor's entreaties that I not marry "this man" did not work, he said he'd go ahead and perform the ceremony, "because there are some things I want to say."

I trusted him.  He was my pastor.

That was my first mistake.

At my wedding ceremony, in front of everyone invited, he scorched my now-husband and me with a patronizing lecture, scolding me about how I should understand "what it means to obey" my husband, and launching such a towering sermon that a future sister-in-law on the front pew whispered, "Everybody stay seated.  There's going to be a baptismal after the service."

When we kissed, the pastor scowled and dug his toe into the carpet, fleeing the church almost immediately.  He did not come to the reception.

He never spoke to me again.  None of my old Christian evangelical "friends" ever spoke to me again, although one did visit once, "because I wanted to reassure myself that what they were all saying about you wasn't true."  Apparently, it was, because I never heard from her again, either.

I've been "yoked to that nonbeliever" for 35 years now, and a stronger, kinder, more patient and spiritual man you won't find anywhere.  We raised our kids out in the country around animals and nature, with deep spiritual beliefs, having family devotionals every Sunday they were growing up, often outdoors in our Chinaberry Grove, because neither of us could really feel comfortable in churches for very long.

I have not, in fact, "submitted" myself to my husband, who is a 6'4" combat vet.  I'm a feminist--not afraid of the word--and he's secure enough in his manhood not to be threatened by that.  We've worked in partnership to raise two strong, independent kids.  My daughter supports herself and doesn't put up with crap from guys looking for wilting daisies, and my ex-Marine combat-vet son has no problem cleaning house or cooking dinner for his beautiful girlfriend.  (You got a problem with that???)

When I look back on who I was during that terribly vulnerable time in my life, a time when I was lost in grief and searching for comfort, I am amazed that I did not make so many mistakes I could have made, had I truly, truly listened to what they were trying to make me into.  I shudder to think what a disastrous marriage I might have made had I married any of the churchy guys my pastor kept fixing me up with.  (One of them was a college drop-out, unemployed, and didn't have a car, so the pastor loaned him a car and probably gave him some cash for the date.  As for his uncertain future, well, the Lord will provide, dontcha know.)

When I was a young mother, and Ronald Reagan embraced Jerry Falwell in his presidential campaign, I knew right away what was happening and what was about to happen, and I knew that it was ultimately going to be very bad for our country.  The hypocrisy of the religious right for hero-worshiping a man who did not himself ever go to church and whose wife consulted astrologers did not surprise me.

You'd be surprised what they can shut out of their minds when they don't want to face a truth.  (Although, what with the Creationist Museum and so on, maybe you wouldn't.)

From Reagan's massive success garnering votes from the religious right, Republican politicians began licking their chops.  Not only were they a reliable block vote--easily manipulated with emotional "wedge" issues--but they were a bottomless well of easy cash.

After having been willingly whipped into a frenzy over those very social issues, the religious right saw politics as the way to manipulate policy and gain power, and they embraced their new-found influence with a messianic zeal.

It was a holy marriage made in hell.

By the time Karl Rove got his plump little hands on it, "voting guides" were being passed out to congregations on Sundays and voter registration drives conducted in church buildings.  And that does not even count what was going on in evangelical television, radio, and publishing.

You were basically told who to vote for, and if you did not, well, you weren't Christian enough.  In fact, some Catholic churches threatened to kick you out of the church altogether for supporting Democrats.  At Jerry Falwell's own "Liberty University," you can get kicked off-campus these days for supporting Barack Obama.

The beauty of the whole system is the ease of manipulating and disseminating information, because of the way evangelicals isolate themselves from the entire "nonbelieving" world.  Christian evangelicals befriend, marry, worship, and educate their children with other Christian evangelicals; often they work in the evangelical community.  They watch Christian TV, listen to Christian radio, read Christian books, visit Christian websites.  (They even sin with other Christians; it's not unusual for online affairs--sexual and otherwise--to occur in Christian chat rooms.) 

So to cynics like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney--who admit that in private, they themselves are not religious--the evangelical community is putty in their hands.  How easy it was, for instance, for them to sell a war based on nothing more than waving flags, yellow-ribbon magnets, and "support the troops" church-drives and prayer lists, with a good, solid dose of fear thrown in; fear of the "other," of rabid Muslims coming into our mostly-white, gated communities and destroying our way of life.

They don't question anything, because to question is to lead to answers they may not want to hear, and they are afraid that questioning tenets of the faith as flat-out literal, would be to see the whole thing collapse.  In truth, it's just the opposite--the more I questioned my own beliefs, the deeper my faith grew--it was different, certainly, but deeper.  (I now include Eastern traditions and Native American beliefs in with a symbolic interpretation of the Bible, and I continue to question things, every day.) 

But this lack of questioning is how they fail to see a dichotomy in accepting that a black presidential candidate can be both a radical Christian like the Jeremiah Wright-guy they saw on TV hundreds of times a day, AND a closet Muslim terrorist.  You just don't question.

I watched all of this unfold through the years with a particular kind of horror, because I knew the flip-side of sanctimonious piety.

In fact, Jesus knew it too--when he faced the Sadducees and Pharisees.  It was not the Romans, really, who crucified Jesus.

It was religious extremists who demanded purity tests of him that he ignored.  The price was his execution.

By torture.

Another little fact so conveniently ignored by the religious right.

Someone who has first-hand knowledge of the danger to this country in combining religion and politics is a man who lived it first-hand.  His name is Frank Schaeffer.

Yes, THAT Schaeffer.  The Francis Schaeffer whose books we read and debated in college Christian circles was Frank Schaeffer's dad.  During the zoom-growth years of the 80's, the Schaeffers basically created the Religious Right.  They were embraced by all the big evangelical names of the day:  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, James Dobson, and others.

Republican presidents had them over to the White House, and powerful conservative politicians not only courted them, but had them speak to fellow conservative senators and congresspeople.

It was Frank Schaeffer who literally wrote the book (and made the movie) on the abortion issue that was to set the movement on fire--a fire that soon raged out of control and eventually resulted in "pro-life" bombings and assassinations, a tragedy that Schaeffer accepts responsibility for--probably more than he should, really.

But at least he's got the balls to admit it.

In the end, Schaeffer's own emotional and spiritual fall from evangelical graces was, like mine, hard, fast, and violent--but in his case, it was far more agonizing because he had invested his entire life in it, and because he knew, first-hand, things I had only intuited: that something was very, very rotten in Denmark.

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My friend Robby, God bless him, has endured my writing about him before, so I don't think he would mind if I do it again--this time, in response to a phone call he made to me today in which he really did say, as soon as I answered the phone: 

"Thank you for not blaming me for the rest of my party's insanity."

Some of you may remember that Robby is my friend who is a bona fide, card-carrying right-wing Republican.  A passionate gun collector and member of the NRA, he actually LIKES Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent ("I wish I was their illegitimate child"), Chuck Norris is one of his heroes, and he's one of the dwindling minority who believes George W. Bush was...well, if not actually a GOOD president...he, er, MEANT WELL.

You'd think we'd hate one another, but we've been friends for years, and no one else could have possibly been more supportive of me when my son was deployed--and I say that knowing that I gave him utter, outraged, infuriated HELL about Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld year after year, and he took it because he loves me and because he understood how terrified I was for my son.  Eventually, he even came to see my point where the war was concerned.

But during the recent presidential campaign, Robby called me one day to say that he had given up listening to talk radio, something he had done faithfully for more than 15 years.  The blatant racism he heard there was so offensive to him that he complained to me that, "My party ran away from me," and that, as far as people like Rush Limbaugh were concerned:  "I don't know who they think I am when they claim to speak for conservative Republicans, because I am not that person."

Of course he voted for McCain, but he told me that, even though he disagreed with Obama on most things and would have preferred seeing a Republican back in the White House, he considered Obama to be calm, rational, reasoned, intelligent, and careful about making decisions.

(Something, by the way, my conservative Republican brother has also said.)

It was Robby who came to me when the viral e-mail campaign started going around in earnest to conservatives, claiming that Obama was dead-set to take away all our guns.  Robby had checked those claims out himself, both in legitimate websites such as the NRA, and in right-wing political blogs, and said that, as far as he could tell, it was all sheer baloney.

"Obama has never said a single word, not during the campaign, and not since he's taken office, that would appear to validate these fear-mongering e-mails," he said.  "As far as I'm concerned, they have been started and kept going by gun-sellers and others who stand to profit from panic-buying."

He was disgusted at that because it meant he couldn't find ammunition just to go to target practice, and felt that the constant hysteria whipped up by those e-mails--juxtaposed to Obama's calm, sensible demeanor--was making his party look crazier and crazier, which, as a lifelong Republican, he resented.

It's been one thing after another.

Today, he called because he was just so embarrassed, this time, by the whole Judge Sotomayor frenzy.

I said, "My husband just told me he'd gotten three e-mails today all about how Judge Sotomayor is going to take away all our guns."

With a heavy sigh, he said, "And yet, just yesterday, President Obama signed into law a provision that will allow gun enthusiasts to carry loaded weapons in national parks."

"I know," I said, "and there are a lot of us on the left who are dismayed at that.  It was an ammendment stuck onto the budget by a conservative congressman, and he really wanted the budget passed, so he had to hold his nose and sign it."

"But that's the thing about it that I appreciate," he replied.  "He didn't go before the cameras and make this big show about how he was being forced to sign the law even though he hated it.  He just did it quietly.  He knew that, the political reality of any sitting president is that they have to make onerous political sacrifices sometimes in order to get something bigger and more important passed later on.  None of them like it, but they all have to do it eventually. 

"The difference with Obama," he added, "is that he doesn't grandstand about it."

I commented about the presence of so many Blue Dog Democrats who'd been elected from very conservative states, such as Montana and Utah, who have pressed the president on gun rights.  They have to be able to show their constituents that they have upheld their pro-life, pro-gun values.  It doesn't mean that he has to sell out to them, but it does mean that he has to give them little victories now and then so that he can count on them later for the big things, like health care and energy legislation.

We talked about how, if the Republican Party really wants to keep from disintigrating, it is going to have to reach out to a few "Blue Dogs" in its own party, meaning, moderates like Colin Powell and others with more nuanced views on national security and more liberal views on social issues such as gay rights.

In other words, they have to move toward the middle.  And in a situation such as the one facing Republicans right now--they'd better, if they want to survive.

Robby told me about a right-wing friend of his who still listens to talk-radio, and how frustrated he's grown with her blind acceptance of everything she hears there.  "They're still talking about the Muslim connection," he complained.  "Can you believe that?"

The thing is, Robby is a loyal Republican, and he is a conservative--make no mistake about that--but he feels that the party has tilted SO far to the right that now they seem to be embracing only the loudest, most extreme points of view as representative of the party as a whole, which he finds deeply embarrassing and deeply offensive.  He knows there's a fairly obvious undercurrent of racism to the whole thing, and even though he's a white male redneck (and proud of it)--that does not mean he is racist.

My sister, who is also a conservative Republican, understands that very well.  After the death of our daddy in his 40's, my mother moved my much-younger sisters to Texarkana, where they grew up.  (I'd grown up in Dallas and was already in college and out of the house.)

So my sister pretty much embraced the whole Southern redneck, biker, beer-drinking, country-music-listening themes of that background, well into her adulthood.  But a few years ago, after a particularly painful divorce, she moved, first to anything-goes Austin, where she lived for four or five years, and then to Abilene, which is also a conservative city, but not in the same way as Texarkana.

"Family values" yes.  Racist attacks on a sitting president, no.

And over time, her viewpoints changed.  Though still conservative in many ways, she was a big Obama supporter even before I was, only the campaign was much harder on her, emotionally, than it was for me, because she was still on the right-wing e-mail merry-go-round, and every day, she received the most vile, hateful, nasty stuff in her Inbox from her former "friends."

Usually, she'd forward them on to me to debunk, and even though she told some of the people on her list--or maybe BECAUSE she told them--that she was an Obama supporter, they continued to flood her mailbox with crap.

Eventually, she met a truly fine man, and fell deeply in love for possibly the last--if not the first--time in her life, and moved to be closer to him.

And then one day, she got an e-mail from one of her old right-wing friends.  It was titled, "Ships Named for Presidents."  There was the U.S.S. George Bush and the U.S.S. Bill Clinton, and so on.

Then there was the "U.S.S. Barack Obama."

And the photograph depicted a rattletrap Haitian refugee boat, laden with black people, some hanging off the edges.

This one was the proverbial camel-straw--immediately she responded to the "friend" who had sent it, saying, "I thought you should know that I have a new boyfriend whom I love very much.  And he is an African-American."

She said she never heard from that person again.  Doesn't expect to.  Doesn't want to.

What these two stories of people close to me tells me is something that is verified by an op-ed written by Nicholas D. Kristof in today's New York Times:  "Would You Slap Your Father?  If So, You're a Liberal."

It starts out pretty funny, describing various studies that show the differences between, not just points of view of liberals and conservatives, but emotions as well.

In one study, participants were asked if they were performing in a comedy skit that required them to slap their fathers, and they asked his permission, and he said yes--would they do it?

Those who leaned liberal, the study said, would do so as long as Dad said it would be okay. 

Those who leaned conservative would NEVER slap their fathers, under any circumstances, for any reason.

Kristof writes:

 

"The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren't a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you'll have trouble harrumphing.

"One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty -- and revulsion at disgust."

 

Referring to a column he'd written before on the subject of differences between liberals and conservatives, Kristof says he'd suggested that the best way for people of any persuasion to open themselves up to the best information (rather than spoon-feeding themselves from the pool of like minds), was to engage someone of the opposite point of view in lively debate from time to time.

But a scientist friend called Kristof on that theory, explaining that all such a process would do is "inflame antagonisms."

In other words, neither of us would change our minds, but would most likely wind up with wounded feelings and maybe a cutting-off of a relationship.

So how, as Kristof says, "do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empiracal?"

It seems we should follow the example that has been set by our own president:

 

"A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side -- ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down "us vs. them" battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side's morality, even if it's not our morality.

""Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart," Professor Haidt says. "Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games."

"Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public's growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay.

"A corollary is that the most potent way to win over opponents is to accept that they have legitimate concerns, for that triggers an instinct to reciprocate. As it happens, we have a brilliant exemplar of this style of rhetoric in politics right now -- Barack Obama."

 

I wouldn't say that Robby or my sister started out as moderates, necessarily.  But no matter what they believed politically, there was one thing that both they and I had in common--none of us could abide bigotry in any form.

This was a common ground we could build upon.

Most of my family and extended family members are very conservative.  I find that when we get into lively political discussions, the best approach is to (a) remain silent on some of the crazier conspiracy-theory threads (b) stand up for my president when necessary, but do it with humor, humor, humor, and a respectful tone (c) search for common ground.

You would be surprised where you find it.

When one much-adored family member accused me of "not wanting to hear opposing points of view" because I refuse to listen to Bill O'Reilly, I named a raft of conservative columnists who I read, and said I wasn't crazy about, say, Chris Matthews, even though he's a liberal, because I don't like loud-mouths who interrupt and cut off their guests.

She confessed she didn't really like that much, either.

It's a start.

Guys, it isn't often that I do an encore post, but on this Memorial Day holiday, I thought it appropriate to run the blogpost that I did a year ago, honoring a buddy of my son's who was killed in Iraq during his second deployment, on June 28, 2006--my birthday.

That deployment had been grueling and deadly; every day one of them got either shot or "blown up."  A few days prior to that, a Humvee my son was driving had gotten hit by an IED, and the injuries he sustained then will plague him for the rest of his life.  Within the next three days following that, three members of the 3/5 Marines met their deaths bravely, including Cpl. Rex Page of Kirksville, Missouri.  Rex was 21 years old and was survived by his parents and a developmentally challenged little brother.

Not a day goes by...not one day...that I do not think of that smiling young man and his loving family.  This is my tribute to all the Rex's, of all the wars:

 

On this Memorial Day, I've heard lots of stirring speeches made by politicians at cemeteries, and quiet remembrances of veterans who have microphones shoved in their faces, and anti-war spokespeople pleading that we never again send our men and women into harm's way unless absolutely necessary.  I've also had big Memorial Day sales commercials blasted at me, and ads for outdoor grilling equipment thrust at me, and I've read the articles about how many veterans pass away each month, both of natural causes and by injuries sustained in war.

But I chose to commemorate this day by sharing a private moment that involved only one.

One of the hardest things asked of combat moms during their children's deployments is to write condolence letters to the parents or spouses of those who have fallen in our son's and daughter's units.  Often we do this while our kids are still in the line of fire.  Most of the time we did not know the men and women who have died, but we know that our children did, and we know what it would mean to each of us to receive supportive letters from the parents of our kids' buddies, should the worst happen to them.

A condolence letter, in my view, is no place for platitudes.  Words like "victory" and "glory" and, to some extent even, "hero," do not necessarily belong in a letter to a grieving spouse or parent.  Saying that someone who was the moon and stars to a shattered family, died for his or her country is too lofty, too disconnected with the tragic reality of planning funerals and filing paperwork and breaking the news to family and friends, some of them very young.

Such a loss is deeply personal, you see.  Not political.

Marine Lance Corporal Rex Page, of Kirksville, Missouri, was killed by sniper fire on June 28, 2006 in Fallujah, Iraq.  He served in my son's platoon--Third Battalion, Fifth Marine, Lima Company, 1st Platoon.  Like my son, he was a rifleman, which is the Marine equivalent to army Infantry.  A grunt, as they call themselves.

I hope Cpl. Page's (he was posthumously promoted) mom will not mind my sharing portions of the letter I wrote to her and her husband when their son was killed.  I thought that by doing so, it would help to remind us all of just why we have a Memorial Day, and why former soldiers and Marines 80 years old still weep.

I started by sharing with her how her son's death had affected my son:


"There was a day, during Dustin's deployment, that I had this queasy awful feeling all day long, and then, he called at a time that would have been three a.m. in Iraq.  I knew something terrible had happened, because he never called in the middle of the night his time, and I knew it meant that he was unable to sleep, that he just wanted to hear a voice from home.  He did not tell me then what had happened, but I didn't need to ask, because I heard the grief and heaviness in his voice.

"I just wanted to hear news from home," he said.  And so we talked about family, and pets, and chatty things that did not matter, but I knew something terrible had happened and suddenly said, "Honey, I just wanted you to know that we never, ever forget about you.  Not for one moment, not for one instant.  We think about you and pray for you every moment of every day.

"And when I hung up, I sobbed and sobbed and I didn't even know why.

"The next day I heard about your boy, and he was the third 3/5 Marine in three days that week to be killed, but he was the first from my son's platoon, and I was devastated all over again even though I did not know Rex.

"I didn't have to know him, if that made sense."


I went on to say that it was hard to know what to say to a grieving parent, but that I'd decided to tell them what their son's life and death had meant to my son.


"When Dustin first got home," I wrote, "he would not talk to anybody about what had happened to them over there.  He was angry and wanted to be alone.  He would leave the house for hours.  It took him a couple of weeks before he was even able to talk about this with his dad.

"Then, about midnight the night before he went back to Pendleton, I sensed that he was still up.  I got out of bed and looked out the kitchen window, and he was sitting out back under the stars with a beer.  I went out and joined him.  We live on a small ranch in a very remote part of West Texas, and there are a bazillion stars and it is very quiet except for the wind and animals.

"He was glad to see me and we talked of all kinds of things.  And then, he started to tell me about the men they had lost--he knew the others, too, but Rex was the only one in his platoon.  Of course, he called him 'Page,' as they all do in the Marines.  Half the time we moms don't even know the first names of their best buddies.  'Page was a good guy,' he said.  'A really good guy.'

"Dustin told me what a good Marine Rex was.  Dustin was a fire team leader on this deployment, and for a while, he had Rex on his team, but another leader sort of took him away--I'm not sure how these things work in the Marines--but Dustin said he was pissed when he lost Rex from his fire team and did his best to get Rex back but was not able to.

"What that tells me, with my knowledge of soldiering, is that your son was such a good Marine to have around that fire team leaders were literally fighting over him--in a good way!

"Dustin said Rex was larger-than-life, funny and goofy and kind, and absolutely dependable in battle.  The kind of guy you would want to have in your platoon.  The kind of guy you NEED.

"He told me why Rex had enlisted in the first place, and what a terrible loss his death had been to them all, especially so close to their getting to go home, and how angry he was for his buddy.

"When Rex was hit, Dustin was the first member of the platoon to get up to the roof where Rex was.  He told me, in a quiet, calm voice under the stars that night, about the heroism of the '21-year old medic' who fought valiantly to save Rex's life.  'He brought him back,' he said.

"And Rex fought too.  'He fought, Mama,' Dustin said.  'He fought so hard to live.  He made it all the way to TQ.'  That would be Taqqadum Air Force Base.

"It was the first real friend Dustin had lost to war.  And he took it hard.

"I just want you to know that your boy was never alone, that his fellow Marines fought with all their hearts to keep from losing him, and that they all grieve, and will continue to do so, for the rest of their lives.

"I want you to know that your son fought bravely and well, that he was liked by everybody, and that he is missed by more people than just his family and friends back home.  My son, for one, who has seen more death than anybody ever ought to have seen in a lifetime, much less a young lifetime, is haunted by your son's memory and will never forget him."


I wanted this sweet boy's family to understand how that can be, how it is that their child's memory lives on, so I shared, first, all the immediate Mills family members who were veterans and those who--at the time--were on active duty.  (At that time, we had five family members on active duty; three of them have done, so far, six combat deployments to Iraq, and one to Afghanistan.)  Then, I told them about an experience my husband, Kent, had in Vietnam.


"My husband is a combat veteran.  He was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam...Kent told Dustin about how, when he was a young lieutenant in Viet Nam, he once sent a squad of men to the stream to refill their canteens with water.  They were ambushed by Viet Cong and a young private was killed in the firefight.  He was the only one lost from my husband's platoon.

"To this day, when you ask Kent about that boy, his eyes redden and fill with tears.  Once, he visited a traveling exhibit of the Vietnam memorial Wall, and brought home a penciled shadow-stencil of that young man's name, which he had not forgotten, not in 30 years.

"Kent told Dustin that for a very long time, he had blamed himself for that young private's death.  And then one day he decided that, the best way he could honor that boy's memory was to live a life that brought honor to his name and to his loss, to live a life that young man would have lived if he could have.

"I can tell you that Dustin and the other guys who knew Rex and fought by his side will never forget your son.  I know that Dustin and the others will carry the vibrant memory of Rex Page in their hearts for the rest of their lives.  And I know that Dustin, for one, will live a life that will bring honor to Rex's memory.  He will live a life Rex would have been proud to live.  I know because he told me so, under the stars."


I told Rex's parents how, for other Marine families, each homecoming of their loved ones from war is a bittersweet thing, and that I, for one, had wept for the Pages and other bereaved families when my own son had called from Maine to say the unit was on American soil and on their way home to Pendleton.

I told them that they would remain in my thoughts and prayers, and that I would never forget them or their son.

And so I have not.

Rex's mom did write me back, several pages in neat longhand.  She told me about her son, and about how the Marines had taken good care of their family throughout the funeral, and how much solace and support they'd taken from their church.

They seemed to be coping as well as anyone can whose entire world has just been ripped apart.

This blogpost is a tribute to all the Rex Page's out there, past and present and future, and to all the families who must endure so much for love of their country.

We've lost more than 4,000 Rex Page's now in Iraq and more than 400 in Afghanistan.  I've heard some claim--callously, if you ask me--that such loss doesn't compare, say, with Vietnam, when we lost 58,000, or other wars where so many of our bravest and best gave their lives.

But when it comes to Memorial Day and other days like it, I can tell you that veterans everywhere are not thinking of big numbers.  They're thinking of the men and women they knew and served with, laughed and trained with, fought with, and watched die.

And in that case, there is always, always...only one.

For a few weeks now, I've been watching the increasingly heated arguments pouring forth from the political left on President Obama and steps he has taken or not taken since his moving swearing-in ceremony on January 20th.

He's been accused of letting down gay-rights activists, abortion-rights activists, peace activists, labor unions, and just about every other liberal constituency there is.  He's not ending the war in Iraq fast enough.  He's sending more troops to Afghanistan without an exit strategy.  He's morphing into George W. Bush on national security.  He won't release the torture photos.  He's putting Republicans in his Cabinet.  He kept Bob Gates at the Pentagon.  He's appointed Wall Street foxes to watch over the Wall Street henhouse.  He caved in on Republican demands for tax cuts when he should have given more bail-out money to social programs...and, well, I could list more but I've only got so much space and time.

Today, I watched his speech on the closing of Guantanamo and other national security measures.  To me, the speech had the feel of an in-depth law school lecture, in that he specified, for instance, the five types of Guantanamo detainees, spelled out legal options that were and were not available for dealing with them, explained why he agreed to release torture memos but not the accompanying photographs, detailed the successful prosecutions of other torture detainees on American soil and how most of these detainees can be successfully tried and incarcerated in this country. 

He also dwelled on those who are not only highly dangerous to American citizens, should they be released, but whose cases were so badly fucked up by the Bush administration that now we have no choice but to either try them by military tribunals or keep them imprisoned indefinitely, for the protection of this country.  And he pointed out improvements that have been made on tribunals for when they do crank up again.  He laid out how he intends to preserve accountability and transparency in regards to Intelligence-collection and dissemination, but told in no uncertain terms what needs to remain secret and why.

I thought the speech was a triumphant SMACKDOWN of Dick Cheney.  I thought the timing of it--just late enough to run over into Cheney's timeslot--was brilliant, because Dick Cheney is a has-been whose time in power is over, period.  Barack Obama is president of the United States.  The whole split-screen dichotomy set up by the media to set the whole situation into a debate between equals was completely fictional, a construct that made their story-telling more dramatic--which the president also alluded to.

There was no real reason to even televise Dick Cheney's speech.  He no longer makes public policy--THANK GOD--and, as Condoleeza Rice herself put it--they had eight years to try their way, and it's over now.  It's time for our side to see if we can do better.

Obama is the president of the United States.  In the early months of the first Bush administration, did the media hang on every word out of Al Gore's mouth?  Did they televise HIS speeches?

Uh, no.  That didn't happen until the man had won an Oscar AND the Nobel Prize.

So I turned off the television because I didn't care what the talking-heads thought and I had no desire to hear anything Dick Cheney has to say.  He is a proven liar, period.  This is about historical revisionism, putting clothing on a naked emporer.  The man cannot be trusted and does not deserve the media attention he basks in every time he farts.

I did, however, turn to the blogosphere, and right away, I read comments from liberals claiming that Obama's speech was "window dressing" and "bells and whistles" and "mimics George Bush," was "inconsistent" with the president's own values, and so on.  And on.  And on.

There is real anger on the left because so many believe that Obama is in some way betraying them.

Now, let me start by saying, the man has only been in office a few months.  We've been out of power, basically, since 1994, when Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and the right wing took over congress.  They cut Bill Clinton's nuts almost immediately with phony controversies, endless investigations, and ultimately, even tried to remove him from office.

In spite of that, Clinton had many admirable accomplishments, but for the most part, the neocons set the agenda and the debate, and the media followed along because they did not seem to realize that they were being played.

When George W. Bush came into office, he pretended to be a moderate who wanted to change the tone of Washington and work across the aisle for such things as education reform and immigration reform, but in truth, he moved quickly to embrace and encourage the right wing of his party because it was a political gold mine for him.  The evangelical Christians amounted to a voting block similar to when a frat rat runs for president of the student body on-campus, and his college fraternity votes en masse for him--same thing. 

By the time 2004 rolled around, he wasn't even pretending anymore.

The results have been absolute disaster for our country, and I don't need to enumerate the reasons why.  We all know why.  Three-quarters of the country's population knows why.  Hell, the whold damn WORLD knows why.

So, we have many, many legitimate interests over here that we are SALIVATING to make right: gays in the military, Bush-abuse investigations, universal health care, global warming urgency, and so on.  It's natural that we would all convene on our new president like a hoarde of starving peasants, demanding bread at the castle gates and threatening to storm the moat NOW if we don't get it.

Now, Obama was accused all through the campaign of being a flaming radical screaming liberal, and although he did have a liberal voting record (which he joked was pretty much a reaction against Bush policies), in truth, in both his books and all through the campaign, he emphasized pragmatism, common sense, and practicality over idealism or demagoguery.

After he took office, he did immediately take steps that please his liberal base, because he believed it was in the nation's interest to do so--signing the Lilly Ledbetter Act, freeing up stem cell research, removing abortion gag rules from foreign aid, as well as restrictions on American health care added in the final days of Bush's term, and so on.

He laid out a massive, groundbreaking agenda that included not just repairing the bankrupted nation, but setting up health care for everyone, establishing a sensible energy policy, and shoring up a shoddy educational system--these were all important, he said, to put us on a "new foundation" designed to bring the creaking country into the 21st century and ensure a prosperous and secure future.

I have no doubt that he cares as deeply about, say, gays in the military, as he did before, and I fully expect him to address that issue once he's gotten this powerful, important foundation laid.  He just does not want to squander his political capital--which he probably thinks will hold out maybe a year--on side debates that are a distraction from these important issues that will effect us ALL.

Once he's gotten those things established, he can afford to deal with these other needs.  He just can't do every single solitary thing all at one time, within four months of taking office.  The man is dancing as fast as he can.

And in fact, he's already done quite a bit, really.

But when it came to thornier issues, tougher problems, more complicated situations, Obama did reach across the aisle, as he said he would do, for ideas, for appointments, and for support.

And as we know, the Republicans rewarded him by turning their backs on him and making it their mission in life to obstruct him no matter WHAT he does.

That's fine, if that's what they wanna do.  The American people are paying closer attention these days than they were in the 90's, and they're not appreciating the Party of No.  In fact, they have become the Incredible Shrinking Party.

Now, I'm not saying that Democrats should rubber-stamp everything Obama wants to do, and he has not asked for that.  Healthy debate, even within one party, is essential in a democracy, and if the Republicans actually had any good ideas worth considering, I'd consider them.  They just don't happen to have any.

But for the "liberal base" to rise up against their own president with constant ongoing howls of protest over every step he takes that is not strictly liberal or progressive, is to risk OUR base becoming as deaf, dumb, and blind over the long run as THEIR base did.

When I was thinking about this blogpost, I went over to Wickipedia and looked up the term "neoconservative."

And I was surprised to learn that, when the term was first invented back in 1921, it was in response to liberals who had "moved too far to the right."

That's right.  Originally, the term referred to liberals who were perceived as being too conservative.

But as we know, the definition changed:

 

"The term neoconservative, first coined at least as early as 1921, was used at one time as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right".^[5][6] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the current sense of the term neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.^[7] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about."^[8] The term "neoconservative" was the subject of increased media coverage during the presidency of George W. Bush.^[9][10] with particular focus on a perceived neoconservative influence on American foreign policy, as part of the Bush Doctrine.^[11] "

 

So, in other words, during those years that we were running people for president like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, and after a Democratic presidency that was perceived as having been weak (Jimmy Carter), the conservatives smelled blood in the water.  Our Democrats in congress were getting kicked out on ethics violations right and left during those years.  We were stagnant, unable to come up with new ideas, and our presidential candidates were boring and easy to mock.

In 1980, they found a very charismatic, popular politician to run for president and the rest, as they say, is history.

So now the pages have been flipped upside-down.  Just as Democrats threatened to become irrelevent for the better part of a generation--even with Bill Clinton in the White House--now it is the Republican's turn to wander in the wilderness.

Most everyone who has given it any thought believe that what brought down the Bush administration was the fact that they put ideology above all else.  They put ideology above GOVERNING.  They put ideology above SERVING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

And during that time, when they were in power in the White House, congress, and the Supreme Court, they ran Washington with a religious zeal.  They even started a WAR that they thought of as some sort of righteous fury against evil.

This is what it means to be an ideologue.

Now we are the ones with a charismatic, popular president.  We are the ones in charge of the White House and congress, with chances to appoint more than one new Supreme Court justice over the next few years.

It is so easy to do that of which we were so critical during the Bush years.

It is so easy to turn into what I call "neolibs."

In this case, that would be a party in which purity to ideals rather than pragmatic governing, righteous indignation over common sense compromise, and closing off all reasoning against opposing points of view can not only take hold, but it can bring down our party just as it is bringing down the Republicans.

We can wind up being as self-righteous, in our own way, as they ever were in theirs.  We just don't mask ours behind religion, but it's there.

As it is right now, in congress anyway, we've got a pretty diverse party, with Blue Dogs as well as liberals, and Independents who caucus with us most of the time.

Understand:  I am not saying that conservative Democrats or so-called "centrist" Democrats or Independents are always right--in fact, they've been driving me crazy a great deal of the time.  This nonsense about not giving Obama the money to shut down Guantanamo because they're afraid terrorists will be running through their backyards is just ridiculous.

Understand:  I am not saying that I agree with everything President Obama does and everything he says.  I'd like to see him form a "truth commission" about torture similar to the 9/11 one, for instance.

But what I AM saying is that idealism is wonderful on its face, but it's a lousy way to govern.

We have an entire generation of young people who grew up during the Clinton years.  They have absolutely NO IDEA what it means for congress to FUNCTION.

Those of us who are, ahem, a bit older--we remember Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn twisting arms and making deals with Southern Democrats to push through legislation on civil rights, medicaid and medicare, and voting rights.

We remember Ted Kennedy working hand-in-glove with Ronald Reagan on education and other matters.

We remember deal-making, deal-breaking, compromise and working-out of the big, important issues.

We remember when things like the Environmental Protection Agency DID NOT EVEN EXIST.

The business of governing is messy, and it's dirty.  A president and his party have a platform that, after they take office, becomes an agenda, and they take it before congress where all HELL breaks loose.

There is politicking and grandstanding and nonsense right and left, up and down, silly stuff that can hold up appointments in committee and get important bills watered down.  Massive egos on little bitty men and women.

But when it is done RIGHT, this process--messy and dirty though it may be--winds up producing something that can be very, very good.

A president knows, going in, that he or she is not going to get everything they want.  They know that they have to be willing to be flexible, to give and to take, to move the bar when necessary and stand firm when they have to.  (Goes without saying I'm not talking about George W. Bush and his rubber-stamp neocon minions here.)

They have to do this because they know, as Barack Obama has expressed so eloquently, that this great big sprawling teeming country is not all of one mind.  There are people on one side of a debate, people on the other side of that same debate, people in the middle who have not solidified their views yet, people who don't care anyway, and people who are willing to look at both arguments and find merit in each.

For Barack Obama to pull a George W. Bush, and grab ahold of his power like it's some kind of global joystick, laughing like Chill Wills on the Bomb--is to alienate a good many of the people who are trusting him to lead them in a dangerous, difficult time.

He HAS to listen to all sides.

There are times when he HAS to change his mind.

There are times when he HAS to take measures he really does not want to take.

And there are times when he knows that, if he gives on THIS issue here or that one there...then when something absolutely ESSENTIAL to the health and welfare of this nation comes along, THEN he can take a stand, give no quarter, and call in his chits.

We can disagree with him, absolutely, that's what being an American IS.  But to DEMAND that he follow our ideology in JUST THIS WAY, and when he doesn't, attack him and his presidency...well, that means that we are in danger of becoming what I call "neolibs."

And that's just as bad, in its way, as the neocons were in theirs.

What I'm saying is that, if we want to make a truly progressive sea-change in this nation--its economy, national security, health care, energy, and educational systems--if we want to see the rights of everyone respected and take giant steps toward securing a peaceful world, then we are going to have to be PATIENT, and we are going to have to be PRAGMATIC, and we are going to have to understand that we won't get every single little thing we want all the time.

We can disagree with our president, but when it gets right down to it, we're going to have to TRUST him.

One final point.

For the past six months, I've been printing up articles from various newspapers and news magazines on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  I was too busy during that time to read them when I printed them up, so I had three stacks of articles several inches thick.

Recently, I took a few days and read them through.  All of them.  Starting back in October, before Obama was elected, up to this week.

And when I went to sleep at night, I was racked by nightmares.  Bloody, horrible nightmares.

What I learned is that this mess in the Middle East is far, far more complex and fragile than most people even realize.  It's a tinderbox, and the whole world is watching one man and his staff to bring some semblance of peace to the area.

The whole world.

Meanwhile, our economy is still recovering from its own tsunami, and just about every single area of government touched by the Bush administration was wrecked.  Just wrecked, by political cronyism, ineptitude, neglect, and neocon idealism.

Every night before he goes to bed, Barack Obama reads through the day's briefings on all these situations.  He is juggling a thousand balls in the air at one time.

The pressure must be unimaginable.  I mean, I had nightmares from reading newspaper and newsmagazine articles.  Imagine if I'd been reading Intelligence briefings.

He is forced to make decisions that MUST be designed to keep those balls in the air, because to drop even one of them could mean catastrophe for our nation and for the rest of the planet.

So for God's sake.  Give the man a break.

When my son was deployed to the Anbar Province of Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps Third Regiment, Fifth Marine in 2004-5 and again in 2006, one of the assigned missions of his unit was to go out on the kinds of patrols that were deliberately designed to draw the insurgents out. 

In other words, they would "hump it" (walk), or drive in Humvees down the most dangerous roads in Iraq, in order to draw fire to themselves either through small arms, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, or IED's--the infamous roadside bombs.

I suppose the logic behind such reasoning was that it was a more efficient way to pinpoint the enemy than kicking down doors and arresting all the males between the ages of 16 and 50.

But it was hell on the Marines.  As my son put it:

"It wasn't a matter of WHETHER we would be hit or WHEN we would be hit--it was a matter of WHO would be hit."

Every single day, when they gathered up their rifles and 80-90 pound rucksacks and headed out, they knew that one or more of them would either be killed, maimed, or otherwise injured during the course of that patrol.

It takes an uncommon courage to do this every day for months on end, because as my son explained, they were scared to death.  All the time.  But they did it anyway.

And they are still doing it--on the streets of Mosul and the mountains of Afghanistan.

Every damn day.

I've been watching the torture debate and Cheney Magical History Tour with growing frustration, because the debate I see shaping up between those on the left and those on the right completely ignores the ones in the middle--AMERICAN TROOPS.

Cheney's claim that he and George W. Bush pretty much "kept America safe" for seven and a half years (oh how easy it is to overlook the most enormous act of terrorism on American soil in American history taking place on one's own watch)--is not only bullshit of the highest degree, but it utterly and completely IGNORES the people who really DID keep us safe--the moving targets out on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This was pointed out beautifully on the Tuesday night Rachel Maddow show by Lawrence Wilkerson, a close assistant to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State during the second Bush years.

I'm paraphrasing, but the gist of what he said was this:

 

"Dick Cheney didn't keep us safe for seven and a half years.  The U.S. troops, who presented themselves as MOVING TARGETS (emphasis mine; words his), in Iraq and Afghanistan did, because terrorists who might have committed acts of terrorism on American soil instead turned their hatred and rage toward the 200,000 American troops who were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan."

 

Many of the insurgents who tried to kill my son and his buddies and three of his cousins and all the other American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were haters who had poured in from Syria, Jordan, Saudi, Yemen, and other places, to join al Qaeda in Iraq--a group who, by the way, did not exist in Iraq before Dick Cheney basically made it possible for them to do so.

They would pour into Iraq, join up with local malcontents, and get immediate, on-the-job training from the U.S. Marines and army troops who drew them out and fought them.  When the Marines or soldiers drove them out of an area, they would relocate to another area, and when most of the areas were taken over by American and Iraqi troops, they'd leave and go join the jihad in Afghanistan.

This is my complaint with one of many claims made by the right-wing, that somehow Bush and Co. "kept us safe."

They did not.

In fact, they made us far more at risk than ever before, first, by elevating a ragtag bunch of losers in the valleys of Afghanistan into superpower status every bit as frightening as the former Soviet Union, which empowered them not just in their own eyes, but in the eyes of other sympathizers; then, by invading Iraq, which outraged even moderates and allies among Muslim nations; then, by setting up torture policies.

The photographs of Abu Ghraib have been used repeatedly in terrorist recruitment websites, videos, pamphlets, and so on, to great effect. It was the best way in the world for us to enhance their recruitment techniques.

But what it meant for our troops who were fighting overseas was vicious, ongoing, constant attacks that never ended because the recruitment never ended, and those photographs helped even more than the war in Iraq to make that happen.

Do I think we needed to know that ugliness?  Yes, of course.  It put a white-hot light on the Bush administration's maggot-riddled underside and led to the reversal of those policies.

Now, there are congressional hearings on the torture memos, Dick Cheney's on his Magical History Tour that amounts to the most gigantic Cover Your Ass campaign in American history, and the 24-hour news cycle can talk of little else.

But just as those on the right can be blinded to the true reality of the uselessness, indeed, the make-worseness of torture as a security measure--blinded by their own innate fear and paranoia and vengefulness--so, too, can those on the left wear blindfolds of self-righteousness, justice, and their insistence in full transparency from this administration no matter what the consequences.

I'm talking, of course, of the decision by Obama not to release the torture photographs.

Blogs are already incensed, accusing Obama of betraying his word, of the press for rolling over, of Bush/Cheney for getting their way, and so on.

The idea that this really might have something to do with national security is roundly mocked, especially since, initially, the Obama administration planned to accept the federal appeals court ruling on the original ACLU Freedom of Information Act request.

But, as usual, the ones who will really be paying the biggest price for that photo-release--not Bush/Cheney, as so many on the left are certain of--but THE TROOPS...are overlooked.

Guys, these men and women are humpin' it over there for the seventh long year of war, counting Afghanistan.  They are humpin' it with gigantic bull's-eyes on their backs.  They are deliberately drawing out the terrorists in order to keep them away from our shores. 

They are ALSO reaching out to local Muslim populations, building schools, restoring water, conferring with tribal leaders, and trying valiently to get them to see that we are not the enemy; we are not at war with Islam; we are not trying to destroy them. 

When my nephew Troy was deployed as a company commander of a Stryker Brigade to the Diyala Province in 2007-8, this is what he did for 15 months.

UNDERSTAND:  In Afghanistan, for instance, virtually two-thirds of their population is illiterate.  The vast majority of Muslim extremists were "educated" in schools where the only thing they studied was the Koran, and a hostile, poorly-educated local imam's interpretation of it.

These are not people who will understand nuances of timing.  They will not understand, for example, that these are OLD photographs taken YEARS ago of torture practices that have since BEEN OUTLAWED.

All they will see is their kinsmen being tortured.

And any good that has been done, any building of schools or clinics or work with agriculture or villagers or anything else--will be wiped off the cultural map.

The footage will run on Al Jazeera for MONTHS.  Photos will appear in Arabic and Persian-language newspapers for MONTHS. 

They will be up and running on al Qaeda websites within minutes of having been posted by the United States.

I understand completely, the argument of those on the left who feel, as Cenk Uygur says in todays Huffington Post, Obama Makes Terrible Mistake by Not Releasing Pictures that full accountability can only come with their release, that television will only be consumed by what we did, if we can SEE what we did, and how that's important for full justice to take place.

But his argument actually becomes mine:

 

How many Americans have heard of Bagram Air Base and how we tortured people to death there? A scant few. How many would have heard of it if there were pictures of detainees shackled from the ceiling in a Palestinian hanging or bleeding to death? Pictures are worth a billion words.

You know why? Television! If something isn't on television, it didn't happen. And television producers are obsessed with visuals (makes some sense since it's a visual medium, but their obsession winds up dumbing down the news if there aren't any pictures or video to go along with an important story).

Television has a multiplier effect. The New York Times story on how we beat a man named Dilawar to death at Bagram just sits there and whoever reads it, reads it. And then, it's done. On television stories spread and multiply and get spread to other channels and other mediums. Television doesn't just report the news; it decides what the news is.

 

But you see, my dear, that is the whole point.

Television does not begin and end with the borders of the United States of America.

You can bet that the televisions all over the Arab world would present these photographs as ongoing abuses taking place RIGHT NOW, and that Obama's word cannot be trusted because, CLEARLY HE IS LYING.

So when he presents his groundbreaking, landmark speech in Cairo, Egypt, next month, nothing he says about a new relationship with the Arab world would be heeded.

Not with the pictures out there.

Releasing this particular set of photographs will not get the practice outlawed.  It has already been outlawed.

Releasing these photographs will not lead to congressional investigations.  Investigations are already ongoing.

Releasing these photographs will not change anything about the torture debate except for one thing:  IT WILL INFLAME THE MUSLIM WORLD at a time when our president is doing all he can to repair that terrible breach left behind by the Bush administration.

Let Dick Cheney crow on all he wants to.  He is becoming a charicature of himself and is loathed by three-quarters of the American population.  He is not helping his own cause and he is not helping his party.  I wish the talking-heads and bloggers would just ignore the son of a bitch.  It would give what he's saying far less credence if they did.

But the next time you get all wound up about how suppressing those pictures has absolutely nothing to do with national security, imagine this:

You are a walking bull's-eye, humpin' it down the streets of Kabul or Fallujah, the target on your back painted blood-red, and every time those photographs show up again in the Arab world, your target goes neon, and the threat on your life just increased tenfold.

Put yourself in those desert boots.

Think for a minute about the forgotten men and women in the middle.

Think for a minute past our own circular arguments.

Paint a bull's-eye on your own back, head out into a war-torn street in Iraq or Afghanistan, and see how comfortable you are with all those nice, clean, intellectual arguments then.

These things are never simple.  They are always complex and confusing.  Give our president credit for realizing that.

There is a GREAT blogpost over at HuffPo today, on the Green page, written by David Roberts, called, "Quit Arguing with Douchebags that Everyone Hates."

And although his post is addressed to bloggers who primarily represent Green efforts, I thought it made some pretty damn outstanding points that happen to dovetail with something I've been wanting to say anyway.

Plus, the title is just too good not to co-opt, even though it should read, "Quit Arguing with Douchebags WHO Everyone Hates."  (Or is it "whom"?  But I digress.)

After explaining that he had been away for several weeks on vacation (lucky him), he spoke of getting caught up on e-mails and such and deciding that "progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists are wasting a lot of their time."

(Good on him for saying "a lot" instead of "alot," which the Washington Post did in an editorial on Sunday.  What's up with that?  Did they not take high school senior English?  But, again, I digress.)

He goes on to describe the diminishing Republican party, which is even more diminished than he may realize, since a recent ABC News poll shows that only 24% of Americans consider themselves Republicans.  That's actually down 3 points from a similar poll taken a whole year ago by Pew Research Center.  Perhaps even more revealing, a CBS/NYT poll shows that only 20% of Americans trust congressional Republicans to do a better job than Obama in repairing the catastrophes left behind by the Bush administration and years of Republican policies.

(That oughta take care of your poll-fix until the next election ha ha.)

Roberts describes the current state of the Republican Party:

 

"They are increasingly beholden to the hardcore, angry-white-man demographic, which is getting increasingly insular and wingnutty, screaming about socialism and handshakes with Chavez and one-world currency. Republicans in Congress have decided on a program of total obstruction.

"This shrinking minority and its representatives in Congress are unreachable and unreasonable. They speak only to one another and their shared mythology of victimization and looming threat is increasingly baroque and opaque to those outside. They are shrinking into themselves, drifting into the wilderness, becoming more and more cultish. There is, in short, no reason to pay much attention to them."

 

He goes on to say that truly serious debates are taking place among the sane members of our population--the nearly 80% who think Obama's doing a pretty good job--on how to deal with the ongoing challenges of the day, from ending the Iraq war to dealing with Afghanistan to overcoming an economic meltdown to coping with the torture memos to redesigning healthcare to Greening up America.

And he's right.

But.

When he scolds progressives for not acting like the winners they (we) are, he glosses over one very important point:

 

"The rational response to this landscape would be to spend time arguing -- and displaying real confidence -- that the transition will in fact be good for the entire country; that industrial states will benefit as well; that the nation will be stronger, safer, and more prosperous as a result of action. It is the waverers and nervous nellies who need attention and persuasion.

"Instead, progressive media types and activists spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time running around like their hair's on fire every time a wingnut goes on cable news or writes an op-ed saying ridiculous things. Every time Newt Gingrich or Marc Morano or Joe Barton says something stupid, green bloggers start holding strategy sessions and freaking out about how to pressure this or that media outlet to repudiate the comments. They write more about, and to, the 35% than they do the 65%.

"This makes them -- and the forces of climate action generally -- look defensive and brittle and jumpy. It gives the wingnuttery they're responding to more credibility and oxygen than it would otherwise have. After all, if the people who want action think these arguments are worth so much time ...

"Progressives need to get it through they're heads that they won. They're in charge; they hold the levers of power. They understand the nation's problems and are proposing credible solutions. They should feel a sense of momentum and optimism and confidence. That feeling is contagious. It's what draws people in and soothes "

 

Did you catch it?  Yeah, you're pretty smart.  I'll bet you did.

It's that part where he says, "every time a wingnut goes on cable news or writes an op-ed saying ridiculous things"...

See. That's the whole point.

I mean geez.  You got George Stephanopoulus constantly inviting on the likes of Newt Gingrich and his buddies like Lindsey Graham, you got Chris Matthews keeping on a dinosaur like Pat Buchanan as a paid spokesman, and every single news outlet known to God and man running screaming down the street every single time Dick Cheney farts, a man out of power with approval ratings in the teens.

The whole brouhaha over the Homeland Security warning on extremist groups and veterans is a case in point. 

Even my secret crush, Rachel Maddow, (yes, I've warned my husband of 35 years that I've fallen in love with a gay girl; he can handle it on account of that whole Tom Selleck thing from the 80's and 90's), joined the Knee-Jerk Brigade when, rather than spending 20 minutes on a Google search in order to illustrate the virulent anti-Obama hatred boiling in the right-wing cauldron in the form of websites, militia activities, viral e-mails and the like, she did what everybody else does:  showed a clip of Dick Cheney and then invited on people like Arianna Huffington to respond.  And even HUFFINGTON gave a pat answer straight out of a campaign talking-points playbook ("It's a sign of Republican desperation"), rather than addressing the VERY REAL THREAT that does exist out there, and has since the Secret Service began covering Obama in record time and doubled their coverage TWICE during his campaign.

In all the chaos and confusion of media political coverage these days, only one quiet voice--that of Iraq vet Jon Soltz, founder of VoteVets.org, took the time and trouble to point out--on a HuffPo blogpost--that it is STANDARD TRAINING provided by the U.S. army to its troops to be careful of right-wing extremist recruiters.

Nobody else ever mentioned it.  Not once.

I'm not trying to get off on the veterans/right wing extremist thing--my point is that the media is still stuck in the Reagan Revolution.

During the Clinton years, every damn thing the man had to do, he had to do it against the relentless echo-chamber of right-wingers, especially after they took over congress in 1994. 

They have dominated the media narrative for an entire generation.

Think about that, all you young readers.

Consequently, Democrats a long time ago assumed the defensive crouch position--fighting back against not just the onslaught of insults, but against lies which were routinely passed off as truth and repeated so many times in the talking-points handed down to congressional leaders and FOX news every morning that it somehow became truth.

Like, say, the Iraq war.

But I digress.

Yes, David Roberts is absolutely right that, not only are commentators and bloggers wasting a whole lot of time defending against right-wing attacks--as always--and that it is time we all started to act like winners and majority-rulers, and begin to set the agenda.

BUT.

As long as the bonehead Media Powers That Be continue to recylce tired old right-wing arguments through tired old losers like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, ad nauseum, thus setting up outrageous soundbites that are then crammed down the throats of any progressive spokespersons sharing airtime...Then it's going to be hard to set the agenda, isn't it?

The Washington echo-chamber is just that.  Echoes.

In spite of all the Obama adulation that infuriates those newly out of power, the fact remains that right-wingers still dominate the airwaves and op-ed pages, white hair and all.

The douchebags keep being treated as if what they say MATTERS, as if what they say HAS THE SLIGHTEST GRAIN OF TRUTH IN IT, as if what they say is somehow the truth against which the bright young newcomers must react.

And they wonder why their ratings and circulations are falling.

I do think, however, that Roberts is on to something when he says that progressives do need to start projecting an image of "momentum, and optimism and confidence."

The good news is that the standardbearer we have chose to lead us into the White House projects all those things.

Even better for him is his steadfast, calm, intelligent demeanor.  The louder the wingnuts scream "radical" and "socialist" and "fascist" and "Hitler," in response to every single little tiny thing he does, even as he continues to emerge onto the bully pulpit on a daily basis projecting his calm, quiet, humorous, take-charge manner--the more THEY look like radicals.

They spent an entire decade deliberately weeding out and ousting moderates from their own party.  Those moderates now call themselves Independents and they are listening to, and voting for, Democrats, at least for now.  

By embracing clowns and baffoons as their spokespersons, the right also set themselves up as clowns and baffoons.

I have several conservative friends who tell me that their party has abandoned them, that they don't recognize it anymore, and that they will stay home rather than vote--not counting the conservatives I know who actually DID support Obama and do so still.

So they've gotten so wingnutty that they are actually now running off THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

But as far as the chattering class is concerned, well, it ain't easy to turn around an ocean liner.

Obama is spinning the wheel like mad, but the ship is only responding slowly.  He is a visionary, playing chess strategy ten years down the road while the rest of the politicians are playing tic-tac-toe, and the media is still stuck in the old game.  ("Ha!  I put my X there!  You can't move!")

Everybody needs to let go of old ways of thinking.  Transformation is just that--transformational--and it requires a whole new mindset.

But as long as media kings (and queens) keep clinging to the Talking Heads of Last Decade, forcing many of us to react and respond, it's going to be hard to transform our country.

Roberts is right, though, that it should begin with US.

Progressive guests on media programs should simply refuse to play the old game, virtually ignoring the provocations from the old right-wing lions of yesteryear, and insist that the narrative embrace the New World.

Progressive bloggers and commentators need to follow that lead or lead on their own by also refusing to give a flying damn WHAT Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh has to say, and move on to reporting truth, as Jon Soltz did so quietly and effectively when he pointed out a simple truth that might have been known of reporters, commentators, and right-wing warmongers had ever ACTUALLY SERVED IN THE MILITARY.

But since most of them never had, most of them did not know that the Homeland Security warning was actually pro forma for the army.

(In fact, Janet Napolitano's apology to veteran's groups should have included that fact, as well, but I doubt she ever served, either.  So, like the rest of us, she let the chickenhawks set the agenda.)

It's up to all of us not to take the douchebag bait.

Just stop arguing with them.

Roberts concludes his post by making an amusing point:  that the "popular crowd" in high school never bothered to argue with nerds.

They didn't need to.  They had the power.

They just ignored them.

 

When my fiesty, funny, iron-willed mother-in-law passed away some years ago, there is one image from her funeral that I will never forget. 

Her casket was placed gravesite and we were all gathered under the green canvas tarp to pay our final respects before burial, most of us seated in folding chairs provided by the funeral home.

I say, "most of us," because, standing behind her casket were three of her cherished grandsons--my son Dustin and his twin cousins, Travis and Troy.  At the time, the boys were all R.O.T.C. college students, and though they wore suits and ties, they stood ramrod-straight behind their grandmother's coffin, their hands clasped, staring out over the crowd of mourners with granite faces.

Travis and Troy are identical twins, and so resemble my son--or he resembles them--that we sometimes call them "the triplets."  They are all tall, dark, handsome young men, and all had short hair and were clean-shaven.

All three--and their younger cousin, Michael, who was in high school at the time--would go into the military,

Michael and Dustin into the Marine Corps as enlisted men, Travis and Troy into the Army, and they would all deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan in "line" companies--which means, either infantry, artillery, Stryker brigades, or special forces--for a total of six deployments between them so far.

Since that day, Michael and Dustin have completed their active-duty commitments and moved into civilian life.  (They both intend to take advantage of the new G.I. Bill benefits this fall, Dustin for a second degree and Michael for his first.)

Travis and Troy decided to head into a career course as officers, as did their dad, who retired at the rank of brigadier general with the U.S. Army special forces, and both have assumed company commands.

But on that sad, sunshiney day, they were young college men who did not realize that, standing so straight behind their grandmother, they resembled Secret Service agents on protective detail.

Not that anyone expected bad guys to come crashing into the burial service; it's not that they were deliberately protecting her or anything.  It's just...

Words fail me.  Bear with me while I search for it...

That attitude of protective vigil was something that-- coming from a family of combat vets and career military men--it just came NATURAL to them.

A few years later, while Dustin still had a couple years to go to finish his degree and Travis and Troy were winding up their studies, 9/11 happened.  Troy was, at the time, in Washington, D.C., serving as one of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  His dad was working that day at the Pentagon.

He raced over and helped pull bodies out of the smoking wreckage, not knowing for hours if his dad was one of them or not.

A few weeks after that, my son called me and told me of his decision to go into the military, even though, at the time, the country was gearing up for war with Afghanistan and, just as he was graduating, Iraq.

When explaining his decision to me, he said, "I don't feel comfortable being one of the ones needing protection.  I'd rather be one of the protectors."

I've never forgotten that, either, even though I was opposed to the Iraq war then and now.  It doesn't mean that I don't understand why he felt compelled to step up for his country.

When I was asked if I would consider reading and reviewing Susan Galleymore's powerful book, LONG TIME PASSING, Mothers Speak Out About War and Terror, I did so gladly, because Galleymore is, like me, a combat mom and also a peace activist.  (Although she is much more active in the peace movement than I am; my activities have been limited to speaking out and writing to end the Iraq war.)

For those of you who may not have heard of Susan Galleymore, she gained some small measure of celebrity when she actually traveled all the way to Iraq, to the Sunni triangle, during some of the worst fighting of the war--2004--in order to have an hour and twenty minutes to visit with her son, a soldier with the 82nd Airborne who was deployed at that time.

She is a founder of MotherSpeak as a radio host for Raising Sand Radio, and works tirelessly in the cause of peace.

She also works as a counselor on the G.I. Hotline.

However, I had some reservations when I agreed to read the book, and those have not changed after having read it.  I say "reservations," but perhaps the correct word might be "frustrations," because I see such a widening gap between those who work the hardest for peace on this planet, and those who are tasked with preserving it.

I am speaking, of course, about the U.S. military.

 

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And the betrayers of language
        ...and the press gang
And those who had lied for hire;
The perverts, the perverters of language, the
        perverts, who have set money-lust
Before the pleasures of the senses;
howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house
                    Ezra Pound


Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
                    George Orwell



Language, and the powerful, poetic use of it, was the thumbprint on my soul from the beginning. 

Even before I knew how, I knew I wanted to write, and it is something I have done, in one form or another, for my entire life. 

I didn't really understand the power of words until I began to be published, and I would receive hand-written letters in the mail from as far away as the former Yugoslavia, Australia, and the Yukon.

The letters would tell me what my words had meant to them, and how they had helped to make their lives more bearable or more entertaining or more thoughtful.

Occasionally, words of mine would be printed that I didn't even know about.  For 16 years I did a local newspaper column on raising kids in the country, and I'd written about an experience I'd had researching a book on arson, how I'd been permitted to don full turn-out gear and go into a training fire with the real firefighters.

Months later I learned the column had been reprinted in a firefighting magazine.  (I didn't mind, but I'd liked to have known about it so I could have gotten a copy.)

Once, a small article I had published in an inspirational magazine on dealing with chronic illness while yet still young, and with small children, brought about a flood of letters and phone calls that went on for months past when the piece had been published.  (In the days before widespread use of the Internet, people would pick up an aging magazine in a waiting room or library somewhere, read the piece, and track me down.)

While still researching books, I would always send a copy of one of my books to a potential source when requesting their help with my research.  Once they'd read the book, and seen the respect I'd shown other professions, it opened all kinds of amazing doors. 

(My favorite was when I was invited to attend an advanced homicide course provided for local and federal law enforcement officers.  We worked with cadaver dogs and forensic anthropogists and forensic entymologists and so on, long before television caught on to the idea.  During the case-exchange portion of the course, I learned that horrifying murders were taking place along the Texas border on the Mexican side, some spilling over; it was one of the few times my work actually brought on terrible nightmares.  This was years ago.  But when I approached my literary agent about doing a book about it, he said prophetically, "Nobody cares about the border.")

Now, of course, with the advent of blogging, it is becoming more commonplace to begin dialogues with complete strangers who feel a common chord because of something you or I have written.

Or to come under attack from those who disagree.

In any event, words are important to me.

Words matter.

I fell in love with the words of Barack Obama before I'd done a single Google-search or attended any rallies or organizational meetings, when I first read his two books more than two years ago.  In those books, he laid out exactly the kind of man he was and what he wanted to do for this country, and how he thought it could be done.  I remember weeping as I underlined so many passages that I practically obliterated the printed word.

There was something to those words.

I knew it.

Even when he was 30 points behind Hillary and everyone was dismissing him as a brash young upstart, I knew better, because of his words.  I knew that if he could be given a chance, he would, by his actions, bring those words to life.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, it was almost too easy for his opponents--both during the primary and also during the general election campaign--to poke fun at his eloquence.

To deride his contributions as, "just words."

I would get so angry when I heard that.

JUST WORDS?

Let's see now....


We hold these truths to be self-evident...

Ask not what your country can do for you...

The only thing we have to fear...

I am not a crook.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Have you now or have you ever...

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Houston, we have a problem.

I have a dream...


All of these were "just words," and yet they can be quoted ver batim by almost every American, even those who, like comedian Craig Ferguson, are naturalized citizens.

I could go on for pages, as could anyone reading this post.

WORDS HAVE POWER.

It is that simple.

And the quickest way to tell if someone who is in power is lying is to notice when they distort or, to quote Ezra Pound, "pervert" language.

I am certain that one of the primary reasons for my constant anguish and distress during the Bush years was my certainty that virtually every word out of the mouths of the administration and their muppets was a lie.

As Ernest Hemingway said in, appropriately enough, A Farewell to Arms, "Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene."

Writing in the New York Times today, Roger Cohen goes right to the heart of the matter in his op-ed, "No Time for Retribution":

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

(my link mechanism appears to be disabled, sorry):

Language is lethal. The Bush administration's legal memos opening the way to torture are a reminder of the intimate link between a bureaucrat's lawyerly subordinate clause and a man's near drowning.

Now we all know what "interrogation with enhanced techniques" means: an insect in a human cage.

Don't say what you mean when you mean to do the unspeakable. That's an old rule. It was perfected in the 20th century from Moscow to Buenos Aires.

Opacity is the refuge of the faceless tormentor. The constitutions of totalitarian states are always unreadable, impenetrable -- and very long. In a thicket of words lies plausible deniability when the time for horror's accounting arrives. That hour always comes around.

I keep re-reading some of the sentences in the memos from the dark side. Like a labyrinth, they lead back in on themselves: "You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique."

The "technique" has a "culmination" that is not necessarily an "ending"; and on round again, several hundred times.

To some degree, words failed us all in the aftermath of 9/11, a time of fear and disorientation. Journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable, politically and morally, in the run-up to the Iraq war. Such failures, it is true, were not gross manipulations of the law in the service of inhumanity, but they were failures nonetheless. And they carried a human price.

So I'm wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed. With almost 3,000 dead, America's checks and balances got skewed, from the Capitol to Wall Street. Scrutiny gave way to acquiescence. Words were spun in feckless patterns.

Mr. Cohen's piece speaks to me on many levels, not the least of which is his own eloquence: "language is lethal," "don't say what you mean when you mean to do the unspeakable," "opacity is the refuge of the faceless tormenter," and my favorite, how the sentences, "like a labyrinth...lead back on themselves."

He is describing in terms both poetic and precise that the Bush administration's galling play on language gave them political cover to do the unspeakable, from invade a country to torture.

"Words," says Cohen, "were spun in feckless patterns."

As an author, perhaps I'm more sensitive to the patterns of language and the nuance of phrase.  It was that very fecklessness of word-spinning that left me dizzy, disoriented, and outraged during year after year of lie stacked upon lie.

Cohen's next paragraph may come as a surprise to many; but for me, not so much.  In fact, I agree:

Those checks and balances are recovering now. I don't think this recovery would be served by prosecutions, either of C.I.A. operatives or those who gave them legal advice. Such legal action, if initiated, would split the intelligence services and the military in paralyzing ways at a time when two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are still being fought. The country would be lacerated.

The right balance between retribution and reconciliation is always hard to find in the aftermath of national trauma. Ask the Bosnians or South Africans about the trade-offs between justice and recovery. When wars are ongoing, it is wise to err on the side of caution. There's work to do. Obama's right: America should look ahead, not back.

A Truth Commission could address the broad collapse of accountability that opened the way for an imperial presidency and the use of cruel and inhuman treatment, while avoiding a facile search for scapegoats that would allow too many to disregard their own small measure of responsibility.


Cohen is not saying we should turn our backs on this institutionalized wounding of our nation's honor--not at all.  He mentions a commission which, I gather from my reading, would do much the same job as the one which investigated the events leading to 9/11, and the one on the Iraq War.  There would be light shined on the worm-crawling darkside of the Bush administration's perversion of national security.

But to take it further, to demand criminal charges and trials we progressives might find cathartic--leading all the way up to the Oval office, if we had our way--would not, in fact, play out in that manner in the public forum.

Rather, this nation would be rent asunder by the packs of howlers.

Where I live, a small pack of coyotes can yip and howl and make so much racket that your skin can crawl.  They sound as if they stand just outside the gate and, on a quiet evening, this can be disturbing and frightening because coyotes kill pets. 

The ranch dogs will set up ferocious barking and you'll run out on the porch and strain eyes and ears into the echoing darkness...but really, the beasts are merely over the next ridge.

They may be far away but they seem so near.

Already, I can hear the coyotes howling--right-wingers yelping for validation and justification of their sacred cow post 9/11 policies; left-wingers howling for justice and accountability and unanswerable answers to questions such as Does torture work? and Should we care? and Is it a sign of strength or of weakness? and Why are we even DISCUSSING it?

Scrambled words and shouted words and italicized words and viral e-mailed words and angry words and worried words, all jumbled together in a toxic soup of chaos and confusion and cacophony, all jockeying for position on cable-chatterworld, late-night TV, the blogosphere, and our wearied minds.

As with most complex questions, there is usually a common-sense solution somewhere in the middle.

Words of reason CAN cut through the noise:


With Obama, words have begun to have meaning again. Declarative sentences are back. I couldn't take my eyes off that photo of Obama shaking hands with President Chávez of Venezuela; it cut through so much epic posturing. But his use of language has been more liberating even than such images.

Two sentences uttered recently by the president in Turkey are an example: "The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country -- I know, because I am one of them."

It was one of those moments when you realize just how scary Obama must be to America's jihadist enemies. Knowing Islam across the dinner table, he has no fear of it. His predecessor, in Facebook terms, went on a spree of de-friending that made terrorist recruitment easier. Now the tables have been turned.

The U.S. has emerged from eight years of dyslexia. It has now revealed how dangerously words were manipulated and is learning again to speak a language the world can understand. America's narrative is inclusive once more, as it must be by the country's very nature. The power of language to reconcile is as great as its power to kill.

At his first press conference in February, Obama said: "The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose."

That's a sentence you don't have to read twice. The differences today are not small -- they concern the rule of law and torture -- but the spirit of Obama's words still provides a useful moral compass for this moment of American self-questioning and anguish.


I don't mean to imply that all this requires is for Uncle Obama to come out and say something soothing.  Not at all. 

But I do think outrage must be tempered by wisdom.

It is unfortunate that a 24-hour news cycle can set up false narratives that can bring down administrations. 

One president's foolish foray into forbidden appetites brought our government to a standstill for YEARS and dominated news coverage to a nauseating degree.  Governing came to a virtual halt while the howlers screamed impeachment on one side and crucifixion on another.

Bill Clinton was actually a pretty good president but it took eight years of nightmare to wake up the nation to that fact, so fixated were we on the technicalities of a common blow-job.

The Obama presidency is a young one, facing many powerful and catastrophic problems.  This is a unique opportunity in history for a complete transformation of our government into one that is more streamlined, more responsive, and more transparent than ever before.

Obama is playing chess while the rest of the country dithers along in a game of tic-tac-toe, glorying in their placement of x's and o's while he's ten moves down the game, planning long-term strategy for the very survival of our planet.

The torture issue is an important one.

But it is not the ONLY one.

If we want to truly see a progressive stamp on this nation's history and its future, we must not get so fixated on where we place our x's that we look up to see the man standing alone by an abandoned chessboard, listening to the howlers and chatterers gloatingly shout, CHECKMATE!

Investigate the Bush administration's outrages, if we must.

But DO NOT get sidetracked by them.

Because if we do, we stand to lose a great deal more than just a war of words.

God, we need Molly Ivins right now.

It was Ivins who first called Rick Perry "Gov. Goodhair," and I would LOVE to see what she'd call him now.

Gov. Goodhair is a d**khead.

My husband went to school with him at Texas A&M University back in the '60s, and he told me waay back when the man was running for agricultural commissioner, that he was a d**khead.

There was a YouTube going around during his last campaign showing him chewing the holy hell out of a state trooper who had the great misfortune of having actually pulled him over for speeding.  Full of threats and self-importance and humiliation of the hapless law enforcement officer.

I could go to the trouble to look that link up for you right now if I gave a damn.

We hate him in Texas.  The only reason he got into office in the first place was that Bush appointed him when he left for the White House, and the only reason he got elected was because we had a Red State and there was no really good Democratic opponent available to run against him then.  Not to mention that Karl Rove and Tom DeLay OWNED the state at the time.

But in fact, last election?  It was split three ways and he won by 38% of the vote.

I repeat.  Thirty-frickin-eight percent.  A virtual landslide in his d**khead brain.

Texas has a very strong statehouse and a very weak governor's office, thank God.  That doesn't mean that we can't be HUMILIATED nationwide by the d**kheads who get themselves into the governor's mansion.

I'm begging you.

PLEADING with you.

Bush was bad enough for Texas.

Now we got Gov. D**khead.

PUH-LEEEZE don't paint the entire state with their big fat ugly brushes.

We're also the state of Molly Ivins and Ann Richards and Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird.

We're a big beautiful state and as of this moment WE ARE CHANGING.

Both Dallas and Houston as well as Austin and San Antonio--our largest metropolitan areas--voted completely Blue in the last election, from mayor to dog catcher to county sheriff.

Obama won the caucus here when he ran against Hillary.  Don't forget that.

What I'm saying is that the state is purpling.  I have written about this many times and I would provide links right now if I wasn't so damn pissed I can barely type.

This secession talk is absolutely nothing but a D**KHEAD governor knowing full well that he is polling way behind Kay Bailey Hutchison for the next race, and he's trying to whip up the base into a Rovian frenzy so he can gather up a few shreds of support but I guarandamntee you we are sick unto holy death of the man down here in the Lone Star State and we cannot WAIT to get rid of him.

Hutchison has been a good senator.  I don't agree with her one hundred percent of course, but every time I've had to contact her office for any reason, either by phone or e-mail, I've gotten a hand-signed snail-mail letter in response. 

She's a conservative Republican so I  won't vote for her but I swear to God I'd campaign for her if she was the only candidate against Gov. D**khead.

Most people don't realize that she is actually much more moderate than she began to seem during the Delay/Rove years.  She was called a RINO on Rush.  You know, Republican In Name Only, because of some ridiculous little thing she did or said.

But she takes good care of our military bases here and our troops.

But this isn't about Hutchison.

It's about a real D**khead son of a bitch lying hypocritical rat-bastard phony-ass barely-governor who has HUMILIATED us again.

Don't blame us for him.  He got in with 38% of the stupid vote.  We hate him.  We can't wait to get rid of him.

AND NOBODY WANTS TO F**KING SECEDE.

Just this past week that lying hypocrite took stimulus money, not to mention whined and cried for National Guard troops on the border and I don't know what-all.

Be hard to do those things if we were a republic again.

God.

Ignore the d**khead and please don't judge the whole damn state because of him.

Or Bush for that matter.

Because right now the whole damn state is CHANGING.  Mark my words, it will be Blue within a four-year cycle, or at the very least, the next eight.  After a whole generation of Republican idiocy.  In fact, our statehouse is only very narrowly Red as we speak. 

We're goin' purple baby, and if I'm grateful of one damn thing Gov. D**khead has done, it is that he has only HASTENED THE PROCESS.

My biggest regret?

The man had to be an Aggie.

Crap.

 

 

 

Fifteen years ago, give or take, I sat in a crowded convention room at the Sands hotel in Las Vegas, (which, by the way, was leveled long ago, wiping out a legacy of Frank Sinatra and ushering in Disney), and listened to a parade of speakers at the annual Soldier of Fortune convention who, basically, set up the construct that we were potentially at war with the U.S. government and that we needed to protect ourselves from invading jack-booted thugs who might want to mount assaults on our homes and take away all our guns.

I learned about how to bury my assault weapons and other arsenals in special underground vaults that the dreaded bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would never find.  I learned how to make my own bazooka.  I learned how to use urban or rural settings to protect myself from the government stormtroopers who were coming to steal my guns.  I learned hand-to-hand combat.  I signed up to receive publications that would teach me how to prepare for the coming war--including hoarding gold, stockpiling canned goods and water, and home-schooling my children--without leaving any kind of imprint that would put me on some government-snooping radar.  I paid cash.  For obvious reasons.

At the enormous gun show, I perused booths where I could buy complete military uniforms, (including various medals), every kind of gun imaginable, mean-looking knives with scabbards, tasers--well, you name the weapon and I defy you to come up with one I didn't pick up in my own hands at that gun show. 

At the gunshow, I bought books on explosives, firearms, sniper rifles, techniques of warfare, creating new identities so that I could disappear, and catalogues of books that are not published in any mainstream press.  I picked up lots of pamphlets on "Slick Willie" and his evil manipulative she-wolf wife, Hillary.

I passed a life-sized cut-out of an armed ATF agent, clad head-to-toe in Ninja black and leveling an automatic weapon at me, with a cartoon-bubble overhead that read, "Hi.  I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

And I spent some time around the bars that proliferated at each and every convention event--set up right outside each room of the conference--talking to mercenaries, gun-nuts, off-duty cops, rednecks, wannabe warriors, and militia paranoids.  (In some of the talks, you could count beer bottles lined up beneath people's chairs.)

I was the only unescorted female there. 

One of the convention speakers, a highly-regarded former helicopter pilot in Vietnam, gave us a rundown of what really happened at the Branch Davidian tragedy, which had occured a little over a year before the convention, on April 19, 1993.  (This was early September of 1994.)

With great authority, he told the packed room that he had a copy of the autopsy reports "on my desk in Washington, D.C." of the ATF agents who had been killed in the initial raid on the Waco area, Texas, compound.

"They were shot by their own people, folks," he declared, swiveling his body so that the backs of his thighs faced the crowd.  "Automatic weapons fire stitched right up the backs of their legs," he demonstrated, adding, with a scowl, "The Davidians didn't have any automatic weapons.  The ATF did it to their own guys."

Leaning forward conspiratorially, he said to the hushed crowd, "And I'll tell you something else.  There WAS NO .50-caliber weapon in that compound.  That's another myth perpetrated by the government."

Funny thing about myths.

See, the TRUTH is that I actually DID have an official copy of the autopsy done on the fallen ATF agents. 

It had been given to me by the same Texas Ranger who had hand-carried a .50-caliber weapon out of the smoking ruins of the compound.

"If they didn't have a .50-cal," he told me drily, "then I'd like to know what the hell it was I carried out of there."

The REAL autopsy reports showed no wounds "stitched up the thighs" of those dead agents.  Far from it. 

They were wounded horribly and fatally in the kinds of places where you shoot to kill someone who is wearing bulletproof body armor.

Sitting in those rooms during that three-day conference, the atmosphere of hatred and paranoia and rage was PALPABLE, real and tangible, like a black foggy cloud settling over our heads.  By the time I got back home to Texas, I was physically ill, literally sick to my stomach from the tension I'd absorbed. 

A tension, I might add, that was completely off the media radar and unknown to the vast majority of Americans at that time.

My little adventure to the Vegas SoF convention was just the start of a year's worth of research I was conducting for a book I was to write called, Ordeal.  (You can buy it in hardcover on amazon for like, a penny, plus a few bucks' postage.  Also in paperback.  It was also published in Great Britain, Japan, Germany, and Australia.) 

The book was a thriller which dealt with a fringe group of right-wing extremists known at the time as "survivalists."

Before the convention, my research had yeilded virtually nothing about this group, these private militias who were arming themselves.  A quarter-page spread in Time, half-page in Newsweek.  I think 20-20 might have done a brief piece.  Really, there was nothing else.  Nobody took them seriously.

But once I'd gone to the convention and been exposed front and center to the real nuttery going on in this group, I became very worried. 

In my fictional story line, I had a militia group that plans to bomb a federal building in Midland, Texas.  The charismatic leader of the group kidnaps a former girlfriend and her 15-year old son because he wants to use her expertise in explosives, and because he wants her back.  But she's living a quiet life as a happily married high school chemistry teacher, and nobody except her husband knows about her checkered past with this man.

I spent a year working on the book, and during that time, right-wing talk radio began to climb in ratings and in nut-case ranting.  G. Gordon Liddy made a new name for himself beyond just being a Watergate crook and sadistic nutcase by advocating that when the ATF came for you, you were to "aim for the head" because they wore body armor.

During that time, I begged my conservative family and friends not to encourage that sort of dialogue, that the hate-rhetoric had gone too far.

They laughed at me.

"You don't understand," I pleaded.  "That kind of talk gives the unhinged among us VALIDATION.  It certifies that whatever awful thing he may be planning to do is acceptable, even NECESSARY."

They mocked me for being a crazy liberal, for taking life too seriously, for having a wimpy draft-dodging womanizing president who needed to be impeached.

But as the year wore on and the publications I'd secretly subscribed to kept arriving in my mail box, I began to experience a terrible feeling of dread.

"Something terrible is going to happen," I insisted.  "You guys have GOT to tone this stuff down."

Turns out though, that I wasn't alone in my reasoning.

Because it wasn't just me who attended that Soldier of Fortune convention.

Turns out Timothy McVeigh was there too.  (That link'll take you to a PBS "Frontline" documentary timeline of McVeigh's movements in the months proceeding the Oklahoma City bombing.)

On April 19, 1995, the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed into oblivion by that same Timothy McVeigh.

I was 400 pages into the manuscript of my book by then, and watched in horror as the worst-case scenario I had imagined took place before my eyes, and the death toll mounted to more than 160, including 19 children.

Of course, nobody could understand why McVeigh would give law enforcement officers only his name, rank, and serial number from his army days.

They didn't GET that he considered himself to be at war with the U.S. government.

The children, you see.  Just collateral damage.

Read more »

The film was short, black-and-white, and presented to a film school seminar for critique and appraisal.  The film-maker and star was understandably nervous because this was his first effort, and he was anxious that it be taken by the audience as a serious effort.

The film opens as the young man gets out of bed and helps himself to a beer from the fridge as his substitute breakfast.  He brushes his teeth, then rinses with the beer.

The audience breaks into laughter, but the film-maker mutters, "It's not supposed to be funny."

As the story continues, the young man takes a desultory walk, but his solitude goes beyond alone-ness, somehow, so that the audience--even though they may not yet realize it--feel his alienation, his isolation, his loneliness and apart-ness from not only others in the film but others in the audience.

In the final scene, the young man sits on the sofa, surveying a coffee table laden with empty beer bottles.  He reaches for a semi-automatic handgun and suddenly rams it into his mouth.

The camera breaks for a view of the table while, horrifyingly, the sound of a gunshot echoes and blood splatters over the table.

The movie ends.

The enthusiastic film-school kids rush to slap the young film-maker on the back and to tell him how good the short film was and how he seems to demonstrate a gift for the craft.

This pleases him, because he had been worried.  He goes home to a house he shares with half a dozen other young people, sits down, and tells the camera that he is glad they liked his movie because now he knows this is something he can do with his life.

But unless you'd been watching the program, MTV's "Real World: Brooklyn," from the beginning, you would not know that the young clean-cut man named "Ryan," is actually a combat vet.  He'd been deployed to Iraq   with the army's 101st Airborne Division for more than a year, had completed his enlistment commitment with the army, and had chosen to apply to the "Real World" program as his first foray into civilian life.

Which makes the short film he produced that much more disturbing, a point which was not lost on his roommates.

They had attended the screening, of course, to show their support for their friend, but they hadn't really stopped to think--not REALLY--what the true cost of war can be for the men and women who are called upon to fight it.  The guy they'd goofed around with for several weeks at that point, pranking, clubbing, hanging out--had just revealed to them, however indirectly, the depths of his depression and anxiety following his combat deployment.

And it brought them--and their viewing audience--up short.

One of his roommates, a pretty girl named Baya, told him later that night that she found the fact that he had actually been to Iraq "surreal."

Now, I'm not knocking this young woman, for the simple reason that she just expressed what most of the members of her generation--really, of ALL OF US--think about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans we may encounter.

Do you realize what a national SHAME that is?

Think about it.

This country has been at war now for SEVEN YEARS, six of them spent in Iraq.

SEVEN YEARS.

To a young person of 21, which is about Baya's age, this represents ONE-THIRD OF HER LIFE.  For one-third of her life, our military servicemembers have been fighting two terrible wars, and yet, to her--to most of us--the whole thing is "surreal."

Thanks to the fact that the president who immersed us into two wars in the first place asked nothing of the rest of us but that we go shopping and continue to visit such hotspots as Disneyworld, then it has fallen to LESS THAN ONE-HALF OF ONE PERCENT OF OUR POPULATION to fight these wars over and over again in a nightmarish Groundhog Day scenario.

And for our young friend Ryan, the second day was about to begin.

In the episode following, which covers the presidential election week, Ryan tells the camera that he will be voting for Barack Obama because, "If he ends the war in Iraq, then maybe I won't have to go back."

His roommates are confused by this because they thought he was out of the army.  He had to explain to them about the Individual Ready Reserve, in which, after you have completed your active-duty service, you are still committed for several more years to the armed services, which means that they can "recall" you at any point during that period of time.

They hadn't realized that, either.  It just makes me sad that so many people remain unaware of that little clause in the contract that can force a young person back to war even when they have completed their service to their country and are busy rebuilding their civilian life.

Most of the roommates are also pro-Obama--which tracks pretty much with the national vote-count--but a couple of the guys are Republican.  They tend to speak of John McCain in hushed tones and to refer to all soldiers and Marines as "heroes."

After the election and subsequent celebrations, Ryan receives an invitation to march in the Veteran's Day parade with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization, and to attend their party afterward.  He is honored by this and pays a visit to their offices, where he learns how they have fought for all sorts of things on behalf of the veterans of those wars, including the new G.I. Bill, extended testing and benefits for the war's signature injury, Traumatic Brain Injury, and better after-service care for those veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Ryan is impressed by the scope and heft of the group, and he enjoys marching in his very first veteran's parade.  At the party afterward, he happily runs into one of his buddies from the army.

Most of Ryan's roommates have also attended the party, at his invitation, and while he is across the room, his buddy tells them what a fine warrior Ryan had been in Iraq, the commendations and ribbons he had been awarded, and tells them that they will always be safe with Ryan around.

For perhaps the first time--even counting the day they saw the movie--Ryan's roommates realize not just the cost he has paid to serve his country, but the reality of it in terms of his own service.

In individual remarks before the cameras, they call him a "hero" and marvel at how they never realized before that he'd been decorated for his service.  The war came front and center to them, and they all began to behave a bit differently around him.

One young man particularly moved by this is a naive but earnest fellow named Chet, who comes from a Mormon background and has therefore led a much more...shall we say...virtuous...life than many of his roommates.  He is absolutely dazzled by Ryan's achievements and begins to follow Ryan around like an adoring puppy dog.  Ryan is very kind and patient toward the younger man, treats him seriously and even begins to enjoy having him around somewhat.

So Ryan happens to be alone in the house with Chet when the phone call comes.

Ryan's brother informs him that he has received an official letter from the army, and that he is being recalled back into active-duty service for one purpose and one purpose only--to re-deploy to Iraq.

Ryan is so stunned by this news that he thinks his brother is kidding and asks repeatedly if it's true--really true--and when his brother says, "Dude, Mom and Dad couldn't call you with this.  They couldn't bring themselves to do it.  They were going to wait until you got home but I thought you'd want to start preparing yourself."

Both of Ryan's brothers are in the army as well.  Unlike his civilian roommates, they KNOW what this means.

It means no film school for the fall, which had been Ryan's intent.  It means probably losing his girlfriend, who barely made the harrowing first deployment and who, Ryan thinks, will fall to pieces at the news that there is to be another one.

He staggers around the large over-priced MTV loft in a state of complete shock before his legs give out on him and he plops down onto the couch next to Chet, where he suddenly puts his face into his hands and breaks down into sobs.

Now, no one watching this program would for one minute accuse this young man of cowardice.  As he makes clear almost immediately--he is trained as a warrior; it's his job and he does it well.  He will step up, as he did before, and he will do his duty.

But it sure feels like crap.

The news hits the roommates like a sledgehammer.

Suddenly, the war is RIGHT THERE, in their living rooms.

In their hearts.

It was something they never really had to think of before, not really.  There were video games they could play, where they could pretend to be fighting bad guys in Fallujah.  There were movies they could watch where other people pretended to fight bad guys in Fallujah.

But they didn't know anybody who would actually BE fighting insurgents in Iraq.

They are all heartsick for their friend because they knew he had plans, and that now those plans are wrecked.  Nobody knows how to act around him, what to say or do.

Over the course of the next episode, Ryan tries to deal with this iceburg that has struck the ship of his life.  He tells the guys he rooms with that he's going to "have to get my head in the game," and recruits a couple of them to go to the gym with him and help him start getting back into the kind of shape he'll need to be in for war.

He tells the camera that he's got to get himself mentally prepared, and to start thinking back in those terms again.

It's a whole other world, the world of war.  It takes a whole other mindset, a whole other skillset, to survive.  Like Ryan pointed out once, the skills he drew on when deployed before were second nature to him because he was active-duty and highly trained.  But he's been out of that environment for months now, and he's rusty.

You can't go to war with rusty skills.

But even as he prepares himself for the shock of army re-entry, he can't bring himself to tell his girlfriend.  She's in college, and every time he calls, she regales him with stories about all the exams she's taking and how stressed she is.  He doesn't want to worry her.  So he keeps this cataclysmic event to himself.

Chet and the others can't stop themselves from looking at Ryan like he's a dead guy.  He could be in the near future, after all, and the truth of that is hitting home pretty hard.

WHY HADN'T THEY THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE?

This is MY howl. 

Why don't we ALL think of that?

I was once lectured by my brother about how many churches and classes were doing projects for soldiers, sending Care packages and the like, as proof of how engaged the country is in "supporting the troops."  I was too exhausted by my own son's two combat deployments by then to point out the cold brutal fact that in every instance of which I am aware, Care-package drives and the like, there is always, always, at some point near the epicenter-- a military family.

SOMEONE who started that drive has a family member who is either deployed or has been.  ONLY THEY know just how hard these deployments have been on military families, and in nearly every instance, it is a small coterie of like-minded people who are directly touched by the war who get the ball rolling, even if it's just, say, a church family.  Many volunteers join in--don't get me wrong--but it is very rare to see such an effort spearheaded by someone who has not either deployed themselves or are married to veterans or who have warriors in their families.

The rest of us don't think about it that much.

In fact, it never ceases to amaze me when I see pundits and pontificators claim that Michelle Obama needs to get herself "a signature cause."

The thing is, she already HAS.  Even during the campaign, she has done everything in her power to draw the country's attention to the plight of military families and to do whatever she can to improve their lives, but it seems that even then, people don't pay much attention unless they know someone in the military.

Which, I might point out, means that very few pundits, pontificators, or politicians will take notice. After all, it's not THEIR kids...is it?  Not often, anyway.

So.  I repeat.  The country is not at war.  The U.S. military is.

Around the MTV loft, the kids are in quiet awe of Ryan.  He's a hero to them.

And this is where I have a real problem.

You see, every single member of that household was young, vital, and healthy.  Those very bright young men who voted for John McCain are just the right age to step up THEMSELVES, but I didn't see a single member of that household offering to volunteer to go fight themselves.

As long as you can set servicemembers apart in your mind as "heroes," then somehow that makes them SUPERIOR to you and me, made of sterner stuff somehow, exalted, like something out of a comic book.

Ohhh, I COULD NEVER, goes the thought process.  THOSE GUYS ARE HEROES.  I'm just a lame-old regular nerd-person.  I'd never be able to hack it.

As many of my readers know, I come from a proud military family who, at one time, had five immediate family members who were active-duty, three of whom had deployed to Iraq, and the other two to Afghanistan.  And all those who were too old to be active-duty, were themselves, veterans.

And yet I have never once heard any soldier or Marine EVER refer to himself or herself as a HERO.

Soldiers and Marines are professionals.  Soldiering is their JOB.  No one on the face of this planet does it better.  But ask any one of them you encounter any place doing anything and they will tell you point-blank that they are not only NOT heroes, but that they are uncomfortable being referred to as such.

This is because combat vets, to a man or woman, have all encountered REAL heroes in wartime.  Each and every one can recount to you the story of a man or a woman they knew who risked his or her life for their fellow soldiers and Marines, or to take out a nest of enemy troops, or who gave up their lives in the effort.

THOSE are the true heroes, to the troops who have known them.  I have spoken to MEDAL OF HONOR winners who steadfastly refuse to refer to their own accomplishments as heroic.  Why?  Because they came home alive.

Ryan, engaging and courageous as he may be, is no more heroic than any other young man or woman who shares the MTV loft.  Every single one of those kids could step up and do what he did and what he is doing right now.  (He was due to redeploy this month, with a Stryker brigade.)

As Ryan's friends awkwardly tried to help him forget, by taking him to Atlantic City, it was clear that, for a soldier who has been recalled, there IS NO forgetting.  It was clearly in his mind, behind his eyes, a part of his soul every moment of his life after he got the phone call from his brother.

Back home after a lackluster trip to the casino, Ryan looked up his official orders online and showed his roommates what a Stryker vehicle was, since they did not know.

But all this time, you can't forget the short film at the beginning of the series.  This was a young man who was suffering from depression, alienation, and anger, and he was not even going to be allowed the time to sort through those feelings and maybe even get help from such groups as the IAVA, before he was yanked back into war.

By the final episode, Ryan has accepted his lot and says he's ready to step up.  He tells an old army buddy that he will be re-deploying with a unit that has never deployed.  "I figure if something I can show someone, or something I can do, can save a life because I was there and could draw on my experience, then I will have served my purpose."

Still, he gets into a barfight.  Aided and abetted by his MTV friends, but still, the anger and depression are right there, simmering beneath the surface.

His friends present him with a going-away gift--a journal.  One of the guys tell him to write down all his film ideas, "And then, when you get back, you'll be ready to go.  You won't have to wait for ideas to come to you."

Each member of the household has written a letter to him within the pages of the journal.  He is touched, and it shows.

But in the final episode, the reality of the world inhabited by a man who has served in combat and who is about to do so again comes into stark, sharp focus.

On the night before everyone is due to leave, the girls decide to prank all the guys, to get revenge on the guys for pranks they've played in the past.  But the pranks become mean, and one guy who has tried to stay out of the whole thing gets unfairly blamed by the girls, which causes an enormous argument between all the roommates.

Ryan gets the last word, as he finally shouts at the girls, "Right now, I need to be thinking about ONE THING.  Getting my head in the game!  Getting focused on things that are REAL.  I need to be totally worried about getting my head focused SO THAT I DON'T DIE!  I don't need to be worried about this petty little bullshit..."

It's ironic, isn't it?  The program is called, "Real World."

But to a young soldier, there is only one thing in this life that is real:  STAYING ALIVE.  Keeping their buddies alive.

All the drama, all the bickering, all the nonsense that takes up what passes for real life these days, all the ridiculous American Idol "reality," is, to the soldier or Marine of today, completely UNREAL.

They come home and are greeted by an increasingly silly population, most of whom have no idea just how precious each and every moment of their lives should really be.

Ryan's rage at his clueless roommates is just a microcosm of the way all these guys feel each and every day they are walking around in the civilian world.

As my son said about his civilian job, "I can look at the photograph on my desk of me and my buddies in front of the Blackwater Bridge in Fallujah, and I can think, Gee, this lady cussed me out at work today but hey, at least she wasn't shooting at me."

It's time that we, the collective American WE, stepped up and did our parts.  We don't all have to serve in the military, but the least we could do is stop treating those who do like they are somehow alien creatures apart from the rest of us.

Reach out.  Offer one a beer.  Give him or her a job if you're looking to fill one.  Tell him you appreciate his service, and then go out of your way to make him a part of your world.

Make it real for him, or for her.  Make it real.

Update:  I would like to thank The Real World producers and camera crew for going out of their way to portray the reality of civilian life for combat vets, for highlighting the fine work of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the Iraq Vets Against the War, and for drawing attention to this terribly important issue of our times.