Duty, Honor, Country
I want to expand a bit on something I said in my last post. “This is not the country I signed up to defend. It’s not the country I, with reservations, went to war to serve.” Ignoring that there are no idealists in foxholes (atheists can be found), I did enlist (in part) from a desire to serve.
Not to “defend liberty”. No. That’s too plastic, and abusable a concept to be worthy of claiming it as an ideal. I signed up because I believed in the bedrock issues of the Declaration of Independence, their implementation in the Constitution, and their explication in the Gettysburg Address.
Really, the third is the one which had the greatest suasive power to my enlisting.
The Gettysburg Address was about the why of that war. Right up front: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
That’s what the war was about. It wasn't about states' rights. It was about whether a democracy, based on the idea of equality, could “long endure.” That’s what I signed up to defend. I don’t give a rat’s ass about “spreading democracy.” I like to see equality spread. If that means democracy (which seems the best bet) then so be it.
The “War on Terror” has to change. It has to become what it ought to have been from the beginning. A police action. Not in the fictional, "we aren’t in a war in Viet-nam” sort of way, but the “arrest the bad guys who are planning to rob the bank” sort of way.
Because the "War on Terror" is proving corrosive to the idea that all men are created equal. There is no way to reconcile that with the idea of indefinite detention of whomever the president wants to declare an enemy combatant. No way.
The meat of the Declaration of Independence (when one gets past the first bit) is really straightforward too. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There you go. All men. Not all men who happen to be white. Not all Americans. Not all people who live in a country we like.
Everyone, full stop.
We used to act on that principle. Not perfectly, but it was the basis for our laws. The idea that the President can wave his hand and erase those rights is anathema.
That’s why leaving Iraq isn’t a big deal to me. We’ve blown it. I don’t see any way we can make it better. So why keep spending our blood and treasure to screw the pooch even worse? When the blowback starts to work toward making the President a kingly figure?
People like to say we can’t quit, because that dishonors the dead. We can’t let their sacrifice be in vain.
The last part of the Gettysburg Address answers that. ”It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I’ve got the campaign medal for this little adventure. I knew some of the 4,222 (last I checked) of those honored dead. Three of them were in the battalion I was with in theater. One of them was from my battalion (but later). Some I knew. At Charlie Co. Dining Ins we toast them. Their memories go into the grog bowl, and silly-buggers in their honor come out of it.
They don’t die in vain if we “lose” Iraq. They die in vain if we start to let people have privilege. When we start to turn abuses into normal operating procedures. When we forget the mayors, governors, assembly members, representatives, senators and presidents are, at best, primus inter pares for a sum of years, and more often just the hired help.
They, as much (and perhaps more) than any others need to be reminded the law is even-handed, and no one is exempt from it.
That’s why I want investigations, impeachments and prison for those who are convicted. Because I have dead friends who deserve no less. Because they gave that “last full measure of devotion” for that idea.
Because they were right to do so. Because to do any less is to spit on their graves and tarnish their memory.
Not to “defend liberty”. No. That’s too plastic, and abusable a concept to be worthy of claiming it as an ideal. I signed up because I believed in the bedrock issues of the Declaration of Independence, their implementation in the Constitution, and their explication in the Gettysburg Address.
Really, the third is the one which had the greatest suasive power to my enlisting.
The Gettysburg Address was about the why of that war. Right up front: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
That’s what the war was about. It wasn't about states' rights. It was about whether a democracy, based on the idea of equality, could “long endure.” That’s what I signed up to defend. I don’t give a rat’s ass about “spreading democracy.” I like to see equality spread. If that means democracy (which seems the best bet) then so be it.
The “War on Terror” has to change. It has to become what it ought to have been from the beginning. A police action. Not in the fictional, "we aren’t in a war in Viet-nam” sort of way, but the “arrest the bad guys who are planning to rob the bank” sort of way.
Because the "War on Terror" is proving corrosive to the idea that all men are created equal. There is no way to reconcile that with the idea of indefinite detention of whomever the president wants to declare an enemy combatant. No way.
The meat of the Declaration of Independence (when one gets past the first bit) is really straightforward too. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There you go. All men. Not all men who happen to be white. Not all Americans. Not all people who live in a country we like.
Everyone, full stop.
We used to act on that principle. Not perfectly, but it was the basis for our laws. The idea that the President can wave his hand and erase those rights is anathema.
That’s why leaving Iraq isn’t a big deal to me. We’ve blown it. I don’t see any way we can make it better. So why keep spending our blood and treasure to screw the pooch even worse? When the blowback starts to work toward making the President a kingly figure?
People like to say we can’t quit, because that dishonors the dead. We can’t let their sacrifice be in vain.
The last part of the Gettysburg Address answers that. ”It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I’ve got the campaign medal for this little adventure. I knew some of the 4,222 (last I checked) of those honored dead. Three of them were in the battalion I was with in theater. One of them was from my battalion (but later). Some I knew. At Charlie Co. Dining Ins we toast them. Their memories go into the grog bowl, and silly-buggers in their honor come out of it.
They don’t die in vain if we “lose” Iraq. They die in vain if we start to let people have privilege. When we start to turn abuses into normal operating procedures. When we forget the mayors, governors, assembly members, representatives, senators and presidents are, at best, primus inter pares for a sum of years, and more often just the hired help.
They, as much (and perhaps more) than any others need to be reminded the law is even-handed, and no one is exempt from it.
That’s why I want investigations, impeachments and prison for those who are convicted. Because I have dead friends who deserve no less. Because they gave that “last full measure of devotion” for that idea.
Because they were right to do so. Because to do any less is to spit on their graves and tarnish their memory.