dissent and its effects

So John Boehner of Ohio teared up today listening to a fellow Republican congressman describe what it was like being a POW in Vietnam. The unaptly named Sam Johnson said hearing about the protests back home made him angry back then. Apparently he still gets a little steamed; this is the same Sam Johnson who referred to another veteran of the war, John Kerry, as "Hanoi John" simply for speaking out against the Vietnam War after serving there. The same Sam Johnson who said when the current administration couldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, well then: “Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on ‘em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore.” A nuclear bomb is, I suppose, the ultimate "shut up!"

Dissent is important, it's sad that this even needs to be said. We can't make up the truth and we dishonor the truth by ignoring it in favor of what we want the truth to be. Is there an argument over whether we believe that the truth is important?

It is only in the idea that truth is not an important consideration in creating a rationale for continuing escalation in Iraq, or, at this point, even action, in Iraq, that a case can be made for escalation there. And it is only by this rationale that truth is meaningless in creating policy that we should stop arguing about what to do in Iraq. Arguing is necessary, it is integral to democracy. Don't we all understand this? Shouldn't what is happening in Iraq be the foundation of our debate about what needs to happen there? And at this point, when it is so clear that U.S. policy in regards to Iraq has failed, shouldn't we be strident in our objections to the prosecution of this war?

Telling somebody to shut up because it might hurt soldiers' feelings when you're arguing that those same soldiers should face bullets and the other person says they shouldn't face bullets is the epitome of missing the point. Doubly so when you are defending a failing policy out of loyalty to a party and its cause, not to the troops themselves. Sam Johnson argues against demoralizing the troops, I am arguing against killing the troops in the pursuit of a policy that is failing and, as presently conceived and executed, will continue to fail. This is not about who gets picked last in kickball, this is about the willingness of a state to eat the lives of its young for empty ideals built on corruption and rhetoric.

To say nothing of the numbers of Iraqis who have died and continue to die. Does Mr. Boehner ever, perhaps, tear up thinking about the collapse of Iraq following our invasion. Does he ever perhaps, shed a lonely tear over the birth of this violence in the wake of our inept policy? Or is it only thinking about hurt feelings and wounded pride? I have no trouble supporting soldiers and I believe, in large part, that our soldiers are attempting to do good works, but I also have no trouble in pointing an accusing finger at this administration and those who support them and asking them a simple question: "to what end to you put these lives on the alter?"

"How loyal are you to these soldiers' lives?"

As Wallace Stevens wrote in "The Death of a Soldier":

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is not absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.

They would pretend that death means something besides death, in Iraq, it does not. It rarely does.

Finally, the arguing that terrorism is a police problem, most effectively handled by policing methods is not akin to "giving the terrorists a blank check" or other such nonsense; it is arguing, simply, that there are better ways to handle the issues of terrorism, Islamic fundementalism, closed and open societies and other various issues than the ways now being pursued to continuing disaster as state issues to be decided across huge borders all at once.

Another Samuel Johnson, confronted with the idea that perception is all and that nothing is knowable so there is no objective truth, that is Berkeley's idealism, refuted it very simply. He kicked a stone and said "I refute it thus!" We need to kick more stones when we talk about Iraq and stop talking about what we dream Iraq should be. So late in the game, why does it always come back to this?