Thursday June 7: Sunny's Almost Daily Commentary - Nancy Pelosi: Just a Photo Op and Business as Usual

Nancy Pelosi: Just a Photo Op and Business as Usual

Most mornings I walk with my son to the bus stop to wait for the bus that takes him to school.  But before you label me a "helicopter parent" let me be very clear, he's doing me a huge favor by acting as the external motivation for my sagging self motivation. After all the miles I've run, swum and biked, occasionally, I need a kick in the rear. Mojo, my four- legged, foot-tall, eleven-pound protector and I keep walking for another 5 miles after I leave my son at the bus stop.  Some mornings Jonathan and I walk in silence. Some mornings we toss a ball back and forth or kick a soccer ball to one another.  The biggest disruption is the laughter and finger-pointing about who let the ball roll into rush hour traffic.  As my son's 12^th birthday is fast approaching at the end of this month, I know my morning time with him may be coming to a close.  After all, junior high school awaits in September and no matter how good looking a boy's mother is, he just doesn't want to be seen with her--as it should be.  I've spent the better portion of my life working out, staying physically fit for those very moments five mornings a week when the only thing between him and me is an abbreviated test of athletic prowess.  But I'm running out of time.

When he was just learning to walk, it seemed that all of his steps led to my outstretched arms; chubby legs gaining confidence and unseen mental determination being formed with each step.  At some point after so many steps had been accomplished, as I expected, my son eschewed the safety of my arms and was able to start to navigate in the real world.  From the first time he rode the bus by himself at eight years old to now getting lost for brief periods after school.  Just long enough to flex his independence muscles but not allow me to worry too long.  I'm proud of the way he has handled his steps toward independence.  I'm thankful that he still allows our morning testosterone-driven play or just the silence of a spring morning.  Gone are the days when he used to look for my outstretched hand to guide him cross the street and protect him from the hazards that lurked there. That simple act of love and parenting has always fascinated me. I still love to see the innate and intimate choreography between children and parents just standing on the corner, waiting.  Then two hands meet, giving love and receiving it. Jonathan always seems to be walking in front of me now, as it should be.  I watch his long legs, his footwork around a soccer ball and I'm thankful that the genetics came together so perfectly and allows his body to work so effortlessly.

Just up 16^th Street about a half mile in the other direction from where my son and I walk to the bus stop is Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital.  In that place there are sons and daughters of other mothers who will not see their children play soccer, shoot hoops or walk anywhere.  In that place are men and women who have served their country and who are trying desperately to put their lives and bodies back together again, men and women whose own children will only know bionic hugs and handholding. They wear the replacement body parts of people who have sacrificed much for this country.

On May 29^th Cindy Sheehan announced her withdrawal from the anti-war movement.  Her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.  He fought the good fight.  As have they all in Iraq, Afghanistan and Walter Reed.  Perhaps it could be said that Sheehan herself, also fought the good fight. She sacrificed much in an effort to insure that her son and thousands of other didn't and will not die in vain.  I can't say whether she allowed herself to be used by the Democrats, by Chavez or by Castro.  But what do you say of a cause for which even a mother who has lost so much is no longer willing to fight.

On the front page of the Outlook section of The Washington Post, on Sunday May 27th, there was an article titled "I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose.  We Were Both Doing Our Duty" by Andrew J. Bacevich.  Mr. Bacevich's son Andrew died on May 13^th , which this year was also Mother's Day.  In my last commentary I shared with readers the "confluence" of events that day holds for me.  Only in my most cruel nightmares would my son's death be added to that date which has become so significant to me.

Mr. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University.  He has also been an outspoken critic of the US Government's instigation and continued role in the war in Iraq.  He writes about people who "endorse" President Bush's "crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth.  They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won.  Some--the members of the-surge-is-already-working school of  thought--even profess to see victory just over the horizon." He continues, "I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail.  In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much."

Mr. Bacevich's continuous outspoken criticism of the war has earned him accusatory letters after his son's death.  The poison pen wielding authors accused Mr. Bacevich of contributing to his son's death.  How absolutely disgusting.

I am saddened and sorry for Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Bacevich.  Two out of millions of parents and ordinary Americans who last September thought that their insistent voices and votes meant change was on its way. 

Shortly before the Memorial Day recess, over on Capital Hill, there was an accounting, a tally, yes a vote.  The American people lost.  After all the hoopla and histrionics for Democrats to take over the House and Senate during the mid-term elections--most specifically, so that they could end the Iraq nightmare--this is what the American people got in a losing effort.  The Senate voted 80-14 and the House voted 280-142.  The funding bill for the Iraq war was passed without a timeline for troops to start to return home. Nancy Pelosi for all her hundred-hour bluster upon taking office and the great photo op with the kids at the Speaker of the House podium and Harry Reid failed the American people and failed my son.  They cast their limp and spineless votes and left town leaving behind George Bush looking like a great politician. 

I challenge Speaker Pelosi to look into the eyes of those young children on the podium when she took office and tell them that in a few short years they will have to head off to a place where they will be used as nothing more than targets for angry people who don't want them in their country.  Wait, what am I thinking.  Madame Speaker's children and grandchildren will be safe along with all the other children of congressmen and senators or children from wealthy Texas oil families.

I guess the term "public servant" is outmoded and quite ridiculous to use in this day and time given the way public servants have taken to lining  their pockets even in this post-Jack Abramoff era.  Need a more recent example?  Try William Jefferson (D-Louisiana) making illegal deals in the House dining room.  And, no, I won't entertain any notion of trumped up charges and the White man trying to keep a brother down. $90,000 grand stashed in the freezer has a certain illegal feel about it. And, yes, I still believe in innocent until proven guilty. But whoever those people are over on Capital Hill and whatever you chose to call them, Democrats particularly, disappointed, angered, caused my outrage and tears.

But what is the mother of a soon-to-be 12-year old to do?  What can I do right now to save my son from possible death and dismemberment?  Sounds rather dramatic doesn't it?  But what if he and I were there on 16^th Street and I see the angry, growling grill of a car barreling toward those long, precious legs of my too-soon-to-be 12 year old son?  Would I just watch as the car knocks him out of his shoes, rips an arm from his shoulder, makes his legs no longer usable or takes the very breath and life out of his body?  Or would I muster every ounce of strength, courage and remaining elasticity in my body to push, pull, yank or tackle him out of harm's way.  And as the car goes whizzing past, smashing and exploding against a tree or something more expendable than my son's life, I would breathe deeply and pray, giving thanks that this was not the day he left me.

In the Nation's Capital last weekend, at a street fair, a car driven by a woman who was allegedly coked or cracked up, steered her car into a large group of people leaving the afternoon's festivities.  The group included extended families, friends and neighbors walking with children and pushing strollers after what should have been a good time at an annual neighborhood event.  The aftermath in words and pictures told the parent's stories, one after another, about pushing startled and frightened children or strollers with sleeping children out of harm's way.  The street was littered with flattened and mangled strollers. Fortunately, the injuries were mostly bumps and bruises instead of horrific deaths. 

Right now, today, if each parent could look into the eyes of their young sons and daughters and literally see their future, going off to war and returning without limbs or humanity. Would they sit by and let it happen.  Don't we owe it to our children to prepare them to live their best life possible?  Aren't we investing in our children's future when we teach them to read? Aren't we investing in our children's future when we save for their college education?  Aren't we investing in our children's future when we tell today's politicians, "No, not our children"?

Back to my morning reverie--I watch my son's liquid motions, quick smile and attempts to outdo me as we throw balls or exchange snappy one-liners.  In six years my son will be eighteen years old.  For several days last week I tried to imagine my son in six years with a swagger that hasn't been earned yet and full of himself and the belief that he can conquer the world. Will Iraq and Afghanistan still be raging?  Will North Korea or Pakistan or Palestine be the responsibility of the United States?  Right now the education system is failing too many children, too many Americans are hungry and homeless and those who thought that they had climbed another rung up on the ladder to home ownership are losing those homes to sub-prime mortgage failures. Louisiana hasn't been rebuilt, but somebody walked away from that financial disaster area with billions and the lack of health care for every person in this land of plenty is an abomination.  Perhaps the world would look a bit kinder on our fat American asses and interference in other countries' affairs if our own house was in order.  We all know it's not.

Several years ago two African American representatives, Charles Rangel (D-New York) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan), sponsored legislation for compulsory national service.  It failed 402-2 in the House. What does that say about the commitment to the war effort?  In 2001, African-Americans made up about 22.3 percent of the Army, compared with 14.5 percent in 2005.  Given the lack of support for the war in Iraq in the African American community, what were these two Congressmen thinking?  This community that has been plagued by Black men's high rates of unemployment, incarceration, and public health issues, should now be sent to war?  Well at least we'd get them off the streets here and earning a paycheck, right?

Sometimes, for a mom, children's lives are remembered by developmental milestones:  first step, first word, first day of school. Their young lives are filled with "firsts." Maybe my tears that day, when the House and Senate failed me, were for my son's "will never be" moments should the US government decide to continue its role as the world police.  For my son and thousands of others who are at risk if this civil war in Iraq continues or if another acronym like GWOT is brandished by the Department of Defense and Homeland Security to gain and keep control of the masses, just like those damn terror alert colors.  Many of my son's "firsts" may never be in just six years.  Consider this:  The youngest of the troops serving in Iraq right now, the 18 year olds, were in high school last year; four years earlier they were in junior high.  That just doesn't seem right to me.

Sometimes, after I part ways with my son, I walk the other way on 16^th Street, north toward Walter Reed.  I slow and occasionally pause at the gated entrance.  I watch the irony of people running the track on the hospital grounds. I think about the mothers and families who are fighting, still, within those walls, trying to help make their sons and daughters whole again.  Sometimes it's very clear that becoming whole again will be a struggle for just for the mind, soul and spirit because IEDs took parts of their bodies which have been left in the desert a long way from home.

As Americans, are we really willing to leave the fate of our children in the hands of people who take the money and run and who don't have our collective backs?  Cindy, I'm sorry that the struggle was more than you could continue to bear.  Andrew, your question was not only appropriate but necessary, "What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?" I'm sorry that some hawk-at-any-cost has tried to blame you for your son's death.  But now it's my son's life that is in danger and just as if an out of control car were careening toward him, I will do whatever is necessary to save his life.  As it should be.

See ya next time,
Sunny