Beyond the analysis of where the long running conflict in Iraq stands, beyond the questions about the stability of the hodge podge constitutional order being set up there, beyond the cold equations that determine how much military capital has been spent in pursuit of war aims in Iraq, beyond the constitutional questions being raised here about the limits of Presidential authority, there is one story which faces us, in more haunting and personal terms.
And that story is the story of those who have fought, and suffered, in Iraq. Those who cannot come home, because both who they were, and the home they left, are no longer with us. Many signed for duty in the late 1990's, a era now which is past, and almost no trace remains of it. They come home in a decade without a name, in a war without an end, to a country without a memory. For all of the "United We Stand" bumperstickers, for all of the pronouncements, the public has forgotten those coming home. I see them remembered on bridge signs - returning units, lost loved ones, best wishes for those leaving.
It is in this, this quiet America, that the drama of Iraq, the war, fades, and the saga, of America, as an epic, unfolds.
America has had many eras dominated by a single nexus of events and pressures, whether the post- Civil War westward taming of the frontier, the industrializtion of the early 20th century, the great conflicts over totalitarianism and the development of the suburban nation - each began with a generation leaving the life they had known - in the East, in Europe, on the farms, in the cities, and seeking a new life, opened new technology, or forced by economic torrent and political upheaval.
And in each of these eras, some proud few have taken the standard and defended the river bed of destiny that the waves of humanity flowed along. Soldiers and firefighters, spies and journalists, those on the front lines of society have often suffered far out of proportion to their numbers, and been remembered far less than their sacrifices. In some cases we would abhor the orders they were given and the way those orders were carried out. But then, so will the future look at us, and judge our motives and means in the same way.
This reality - of standing between the hard winds of chaos, and the teaming flood of humanity seeking a better life - gives rise to a certain kind of person, a certain hardness, a certain stare at the world, that seeks to see the threat behind the innocent moment, and yet spare the innocent from the hard hand of justice, retribution or preëmption. As it was in 1805 in the age of wooden ships and iron men, in 1905 in the urban jungles of New York and the steaming colonial jungles of the Phillipines, it is these people who are the thin line between two turbulent realms. They must guard against both dangers from without, and from within.
It is for this reason that the faces of those who have been wounded, the faces of their families, are different in loss from most others. There is, even with the tears, even with the grief and furrows of anguish, a different cast to the features. A discipline that holds all in tension. It is because those who seek this role are often meant for no other, and some, by their own admission, would say they are fit for no other. It has been said that some people are put on this earth to do only one thing. For some, it is to hold out the night, bashing it back with ones bare hands, whether with words, or bullets or ideas.
Thus when one of these people passes beyond this world into the next, he or she leaves behind a different kind of hole. All too often what they tried to do for society, they did for their families and those around them. The were not merely the pillars of the nation, they were often the tower of strength upon which everyone relied. The calm in the storms, the certain judgement to act when actions were needed.
I have seen too many faces of loss, too many families stripped of their son, or having a son return who is different in body and spirit. And it is so across the nation. In some cases the loss of this family member was merely the beginning of tragedy. One father last year committed suicide because his son was not coming home.
There are then two armies of ghosts. The faces of all of the lost, the lost who were, for the most part young, and full of promise. The faces of those who have lost them, who wander in this world, but seek to see, by that other light, the person who has been ripped from them.
But America is an epic, not a tragedy. While there has been a sharp and lucid injury inflicted, it is not mortal or fatal. Already there is a binding back together the harms inflicted. Older veterans counsel the younger - finally finding in this generation a generation that understands what Tet meant, what it means to look at each footfall, lest their be a trap beneath the ground. Another who knows what it is like to walk the halls at night to feel the perimeter is secure.
In the tumult of politics, in the conflict over Iraq and the means to end American involvement in this bloody brutal blunder, there is a transience. Instead, to look at those who have been touched by the wars of this decade, is to realize that their real effect is carved in the faces of families and the fallen. It is this that is the lasting story of the war, the story that will go on for years afterward. The POW-MIA flags fly around the country still from Vietnam, and there are still a few houses that have gold stars from that old epic war. So too will this war leave its traces on our culture, on our homes.
And so too must we demand that our leaders begin to pay more than lip service to this reality. There is the practical part - of not cutting budgets for veterans. But there is also a symbolic part. For regardless of what who believed of which war when, the truth of Democracy is that we are all bound together as one people, and we must embrace our fellow Americans who have come home from the wars, and the families of those whose loved ones will not come home, and by this embrace bind the wounds that have wrent us assunder as one nation.
Because while the fallen in Iraq are the most visible symbols, we have waged two wars, one in Iraq, and one around the globe. Each have claimed thousands of lives. Thousands more will perish - some seen, some unseen, some intentionally hidden from sight - before they are brought to a conclusion. We cannot live as a people at war with ourselves.
We must grieve as a nation, we must heal as a nation, we must go forward together, into the lives we have to live. Lives which lie in the future, and not the past.
[People ask me what I do when not writing Kos diaries. The answer is that I blog, I do consulting, and I compose classical music.]