My iphone couldn't get passed the login screen of the NYT this morning. I wanted to read Bob Herbert's Coming Late to the Table on my way out before work. Something about the title rang familiar. Home now, caked in dirt from a day spent in the mud, I get this e-mail from my mom "Herbert on war, lies and Sherwood."
Sherwood is my brother, killed in Iraq, lost to a shameful war.
Bob Herbert talks about Sherwood in his column chastising Scott McClellan.
Sergeant Baker had only been in Baghdad six weeks when he was blown up in an explosion at a factory. An absurd footnote to his death was the fact that he was helping to provide security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was hunting for the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
The title stuck out, I realize now, because of what he wrote for his Thanksgiving piece in 2006 titled The Empty Chair at the Table.
Grief is magnified during the holidays, and with the toll in Iraq steadily mounting, there are now thousands of families across the U.S. who are faced, like Sergeant Baker’s relatives, with an awful empty space at their Thanksgiving tables.
Mr. Herbert came to our home as we prepared for another holiday without our Sher. He was kind, listened patiently, and despite my best efforts to explain a shortcut, he took the long way back to New York.
I would disagree with him, though. Grief is consistent, I've found, even through the "revelations" of people like Scott McClellan.
Mr. Herbert put the book in its proper perspective--standing by while this happened was not simply an exercise in poor civic duty. Scott McClellan actively worked to extend this war and, consequently, extended death and devastation to doorsteps across America and Iraq.
I will not bash the man--I appreciate somehow that he referenced his Christian faith as a cause for speaking out. He did not ask for forgiveness, but I grant it anyway. Forgiveness is not currency, after all.
And I don't have time to be dismissive, there's too much healing to do.
The thread in Mr. Herbert's columns is this concept of the table. I know too many who sit here with us, others who have lost someone dear to them in the war in Iraq. But I would say we each bring a few extra chairs for those who would call us family and sit here with us. The table is plenty big enough for this odd collective we call the United States to join together around.
If Scott McClellan would join our cause now to stop the war, I would welcome him. I don't know if he will, nor do I know if he can grasp the magnitude of what he helped sow.
Mr. Herbert writes:
The war in Iraq, which has taken 100,000 or more Iraqi lives, and which will cost the U.S. upwards of $3 trillion, and which continues indefinitely, is a scandal and a crime. Scott McClellan is a little late to be blowing the whistle on this outrage.
Late indeed. Too late for my brother. Too late for over 4,000 other Americans.
And there are thousands upon thousands of lives yet to be lost to this atrocity.
It is never too late, however, to build our coalition of the willing. I don't even know if Scott McClellan is hungry, but he's welcome for dinner at my house anytime.