And the Band Played Walting Matilda...for no just cause

Know any cripples? Possibly, but for the most part we do not. Despite the ADA, the end of care in State Schools and so on, the end of the extended nuclear family (yeah, I know it's a contradiction in terms, but I don't want to get the family defenders after me on this one...that can wait), we are shielded from this. So, there is that moment of shock. So much greater when the injury is horrific -- when the amputee shaves, she doesn't necessarily have to look at the injury. What if there is no face to shave, just a lump, with eyes?

I commented on another blog this morning that the existential void facing those who have suffered catastrophic loss in this horrible war who are asked to acknowledge it was for no reason at all save ignorance, vanity and greed is perhaps too much for us to ask a reasonable man to confront. The heroism of the Tillman family is even more admirable because they are able to question and demand the truth and "not vengence, but a reckoning." as the Doctor puts it in Tombstone. It would have been easier to stop asking.

I am a soldier -- I don't wear the uniform anymore, but I still bleed green inside and always will. I was stunned the first time I was wandering into Madigan Army Medical Center to pick up a prescription, and saw a soldier missing a leg, above the knee, waiting...just waiting. So, when I saw these, I was nauseated, and cried. Not for them; they deserve far more, infinitely more than my tears. I can say with honesty that they were not tears of grief, but of rage and pride, as I cried for those who sent them there for no cause. If I thought there was a God and a hell, I'd volunteer to go if Satan would let me turn the spit roasting Bush, Cheney, Powell, Tenet, Rumsfeldt, Wolfowitz and all the rest of the slime that caused us to waste these lives and these Americans, their incredible valour and devotion.

I have always loved, even though I felt it was naive, Steven Decatur's toast " Our country! In it's intercourse with others, let it always be in the right. But, my country, right or wrong." Today, I would add,"May it always be worthy of the loving and willing sacrifice of its children. May it's leaders never sleep if it is not"

Comments

[sglover]

Until a couple of months ago, I lived in downtown Silver Spring, MD, about a mile or two up the road from Walter Reed. The area's been extensively redeveloped, so that it's like a big open-air shopping mall. Over the last few years, once or twice a week I'd see some fresh harvest from Iraq, wheeling around or taking the new prostheses out for a spin.

I'm a vet, too -- but I was a decidedly rear-echelon squid. Anyway, I never knew what to say to these guys. Seems presumptuous to just go up to them and say, I'm sorry, or Thank you for your service. I'm just glad that Walter Reed doesn't have a burn unit, or (as far as I know) handle reconstructive plastic surgery.... And I couldn't help thinking that it's gotta be strange, coming back to one of the wealthiest areas of the planet, and seeing everybody pretty much oblivious to the war.

Another thing: I loathe the Cheney criminal syndicate every bit as much as you. Hell, roasting them on a pit is letting them off too easy. But the really galling thing is that they, and their more effective lickspittles (Kristol, Perle, Feith, Davey Brooks, Mr. Friedman Unit himself) -- they all live just a few Metro stops away. They're all doing splendidly, and I'm sure that many of them can look forward to six or seven figure advances on their memoirs.

Meanwhile, "my" Democratic Party does absolutely nothing to head off an even bigger catastrophe in Iran. It looks as though it all rests pretty much entirely in the hands of Bush and Cheney, eh? I expect that the period after the election will be ideal for a fait accompli.

We are so fucked.....