Verbosities

(Me, reading the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial - Photo courtesy Gracie)

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. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.



But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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 hate feeling like a conspiracy theorist or crackpot crank.



Two Saturdays ago, I climbed the stairs to the Lincoln Memorial, and spent a few quiet moments reading, then re-reading the Gettysburg Address. It starts the way you remember, but quickly becomes complicated while trying to retain its overarching nobility.



We started out under the advice of great men - Enlightened men. They theorized that we should be equal under government, and equal under liberty. We were able to sustain a peace, but decided to fight over preserving the union under these ideals we did once claim to be founded by.



It's easy to that point. The rest of Lincoln's words left me troubled.



I was asked a little while back if I was "so cynical" as to believe that George Bush was throwing good soldiers after the dead in Iraq, essentially to avoid admitting he was wrong. I think I denied that level of cynicism in the moment, but I'm not so sure how much I do or don't believe that notion.



I sit on my couch on Sunday mornings and watch the talk shows now, which is something I didn't do eight or nine months ago. "Can you believe that!?!" I'll yell to no one in particular as Dick Cheney denies he ever said that meeting between Mohammed Atta and Saddam's intelligence guys ever took place. Arlen Specter triangulates himself into a supposed reasonable centrist, and all the while I'm seething because Bob Schieffer hasn't asked him about how he directly enabled this DOJ scandal to take hold through a Specter-fed provision in the Patriot Act that allows the administration to avoid confirmation hearings. I want to walk around and kick holes in my wall every time I see a fabricated Pelosi "scandal" or some pundit on the TV using Obama's middle name or the phrase, "Democrat Congress."



Saturday night I got an email from a friend on the West Coast asking what I was up to for the night. I told her I was getting drunk and watching a PBS documentary on the press' complicity in the selling of the Iraq war to America.



She wasn't surprised.



The only moment of political thought that brought me hope this weekend was when I checked to see if R. James Woolsey was a Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, and was pleased and relieved to see that he wasn't.



Then again, would it shock you to know he's aligned now with PNAC, and that my hope shifted right back to disgust?



Am I cynical?



A long, long time ago I went through a period where I put all feeling and emotion behind a literal smokescreen in a distinct attempt to not acknowledge what a mess my life had become. I didn't want to think about anything, and managed to do just that for a couple of years. Politics feels at times like that same sort of smokescreen, but I'm feeding a different sort of appetite out of this distraction. My life is still kind of a mess, but while there are certainly truths about myself I don't feel much like handling, I don't think I'm trying to use this distraction to evade something important that needs my attention. Not like last time, at least.



I still feel powerless, and I still feel distracted, but at least now I think the complications are warranted. Am I so cynical to believe that George Bush was throwing good soldiers after the dead in Iraq, essentially to avoid admitting he was wrong?



I got hung up at the Lincoln Memorial reading and re-reading the Gettysburg Address - specifically the following words:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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.

We shall preserve the idea of nation and unity that is reborn from the blood spilled by those noble enough to take up arms to wage devotion upon their brother in the pursuit and preservation of ideas.



Is that what Iraq is about?



The American Civil War was a war fought over ideas, and World War II a war fought over the existential preservation of freedom in our world.



Is that what Iraq is about?



Lincoln acknowledged two things in this speech that got to me. First, that it became necessary to redefine and preserve liberty through "the last full measure of devotion." Second, that the soldiers in whose footsteps we follow merely showed us the way, with the true hard work done by those who follow in the purity of the sacrifice that preceded them.



The contrast between Lincoln's words, that the true measure of honor for those that fought and died for liberty is to continue the cause for which they perished, is put in stark contrast to this administration's actions that lied us into a non-essential war, and their attempts to quell dissent by positioning the troops between the questions being asked and the answers those questions merit.



I believe that this administration lied to get us into war. I believe they are using the troops as a prop, as a wedge, and as a means to attempt to install a puppet "democracy" in the Middle East. I don't think Iraq was ever about al-Qaeda or WMDs or Saddam, specifically.



I also do not believe there is a "win" or a "mission accomplished" that satisfies the conditions that we were sold to get into this in the first place. This is why there are no benchmarks, no timetables, and no clear goals for our withdrawal. We don't know what "winning" looks like, nor will we as the Iraqis - Sunni, Shia and Kurd - attempt to shed their own blood to forcibly determine their own destinies.



It goes to follow that if I believe what I've just stated, that I believe the Bush administration is using our soldiers to press through this perceived inertia in an unwinnable conflict. So yes, I am so cynical as to believe that George Bush is sending soldiers to die in a non-existential struggle in which we have no business and no clear idea as to what "mission accomplished" means.



I hate feeling like a crackpot sometimes. I want a lot of things as corollary benefits of my citizenship - most notably the rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution and a government that allows me the ability to make my own choices and determine my own morality. But I want this illusory idea of safety as well. I want to sleep easy and board airplanes without worry. I want a government that retains enough pull in foreign policy to be able to work in our nation's most advantageous interests to broker deals and ensure that peace is more prevalent than conflict.



To me, this isn't about left or right. It's about a lie and the compounding of failure to the deaths of soldiers and the loss of perceived status to those on whom we depend on the world stage. Left or right, we all want safety and we all want liberty. Lincoln's plea to the American people to rally our values and ideals and amplify the noble blood spilled in the interest of the preservation of freedom is not lost on me. The soldiers we lost in the desert theater are not dying in vain, but in my eyes they're not dying specifically to prevent nuclear weapons from being sold to al-Qaeda. The soldiers we lost in the desert theater are dying to help us all see the folly of wars of convenience and the hammerheaded blunders of refusing to acknowledge our mistakes as they continue to compound.



If remembering the nobility of the service of our soldiers through the prism of optimism, through the windows on our past and the refusal to follow warmongering chickenhawks into the fray for fallacious reasons is conspiracy theory and crackpot nuttiness, then I'm willing to wear that label.



Proudly. Taking increased devotion to that cause.

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