The True State of the Union

Frank Rich sums up the state of the Union and our position in Iraq, particularly as it relies upon mercernary support.

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

This is a very good and frightening point. But well before they drop their guns and go home, they will have upped the cost of hiring them to bleed all the profit out of the situation first.

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

And actually, that’s pretty much the same as nothing left to lose, which may be as good an excuse as any to keep on ignoring what we have become as a nation. Rich presents good sentiments in his article, but I don’t think Congress is somnambulant. I think Congress is fully awake and complicit.

And as for us, the citizens, we were foreseen by one of the founders of our country:

Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? … Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. … [We] shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, ... will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion. -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia – 1784

Another wise philosopher once noted:

When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. -- Dakota proverb

And as long as I’m quoting wisdom:

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. -- Albert Einstein

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.