On Lincoln's birthday I am going to talk till I am blue in the face about politics, his political genius in assembling a diverse coalition that renewed the American belief that All men are created equal. The vital personal element of this achievement was Lincoln's passion of course, which was born of humility. He had led a hard life. He lost his mother as a child, he avoided his father's deathbed because he didn't want to have words with him, he had lost a son, and by 1850 he'd lost his great political career. Out of that humility, Lincoln was able to reach out to the common man and to the intellectuals, to the rugged west that he personified and to the chattering classes in New York who were stunned to observe his verbal powers in 1860. Lincoln spanned class and geography to bring together the people who hated slavery. He helped destroy the corrupt regime of Whig and Democrat, and bring a new party into being.
So this morning I want to talk about two principled Americans who are working across the same lines on our corrupt Middle East policy.
One of the most courageous political acts I've ever observed was in September 2005 when Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina whose support for the Iraq war was so vehement that he got the nickname "French Fry" Jones for his effort to rename the pomme-de-terre the Liberty Fry, walked into a small Capitol Hill hearing room filled with leftleaning Democrats and condemned the Iraq war. Jones had changed because he had to write personal letters to the families of slain soldiers in his heavily-military district. He could not face those families and put his name to statements he knew to be lies.
Since that time, Jones has suffered at the hands of the Republican leadership, but it hasn't stopped him. Lately he has pushed the Pentagon to give the media access to the coffins coming home. There's got to be a "visual," he tells the New York Times. And yesterday this public servant gave a great speech on the House floor about the terrible psychological effects of service on young men and women. I caught a few minutes of his speech at lunch. He read a mother's lament of her Marine Corps son:
“He has had a very difficult time readjusting to life after conflict. He came home to a `Dear John' letter, had several friends injured and killed and has seen more destruction than most of us will see in a lifetime. And having no one to turn to for help because of the stigma and the fear of losing his career, he started drinking to self-medicate so that he would be able to sleep.
“Congressman, do you know what it is like to listen to your once-strong son cry like a baby at 3:30 in the morning three to four times a week because he can't handle what he has been through? Wanting to kill himself because he doesn't feel he is worthy to live because his brothers were shot down?.. All the while wondering and asking why the Corps he served so proudly and willingly has written him off as worthless and weak and offer no help to prevent him from faltering further?"
Wrenching.
Yesterday on this site I quoted an email from young Anna Baltzer, an Ivy League Jew who believes in service as passionately as Walter Jones, that also struck a populist note:
policy in the Middle East and increasingly sympathetic towards the
plight of the Palestinians. It's not just in the big liberal
cities–it's in the smallest Midwestern towns, it's on conservative
southern ranches–it' s everywhere. In every corner of the country,
there is a middle-aged couple who just came back from Bethlehem or a
soldier who just came back from Iraq who is outraged. We have reached
a critical mass.
Today there is growing overlap between the blue-state progressive movement that Baltzer and I represent and the red-state questioning that Jones represents. The most you will see of it in the mainstream is when Chris Matthews inveighs against the neoconservatives' agenda on his show (last night) but won't say what that agenda was. Those who love America's image in the world have got to bring these strands together if we are going to change American policy in the Middle East. Progressive Jews are essential, so are military families.
Anna Baltzer gives a very powerful presentation on apartheid conditions in the West Bank. Here's hoping that a church group in Walter Jones's district will invite Baltzer to speak, and invite Jones too. Together they can change our policy.
(Phil Weiss)
