Don't Bother Me, II

I'm looking for pictures of George Bush at military hospitals consoling the recently amputeed. I know there's one here somewhere. Oh maybe there's one of Rumsfeld, no maybe, Cheney, no...hhhhhmmm

In the 80's there was a demonstration at the University of New Mexico. It involved something that seemed important to me at the time. Now it's only memorable because of something I did. In the midst of this swirling demonstration on the quad Senator Bingaman was holding a talk of some kind in some conference room off the student union building. It struck me as so very wrong, for this man to be holding a conference on an unrelated topic while a demonstration directly involving votes he had or was about to make was taking over the campus outside. I thought, to show you how naive I was, that the good Senator must not be aware of what is happening. So I informed him. I was brimming over with expectation. I jumped the line in my eagerness and was speaking quickly and loudly as my turn to speak came. The Senator looked at me for just a split second as though I were the most naive person on the planet. I was unable to hold his eye and looked away to see the look of shock on the assembled at my rash manner.

Now I realize that my words were merely a symptom of the regime. I was too young and dumb to be having my own thoughts in that situation. The urge to action was a derivation of the situation I was in. My appearance was simply a marker for evaluating the level of public interest. A further escalated marker could be, for instance, that of a group of young folks, instead of just like myself, to show up and make the same complaint.

Obviously the President, the pseudo-potus, cannot attend to every soldier who has lost a limb. The President, pseudo-potus, has a responsibility to wage the world wide campaign against Islamo-fascism and other such terrorists. De-limbed American soldiers are merely a marker to the President, the pseudo-potus, in this war. Today the Washington Post begins exploring the lives of the soldiers who are slowly returning to American life after giving up their limbs for God and Country. This is a marker for the Bush Regime in the same way I was a marker for Bingaman. In the coming months these men will start encountering the VA. They will show up on Opra, reality tv shows, & in the lives of countless Americans. When there are speaking after they have healed physically that will be another marker for the administration. Any reasonable success in the initial plan for the war had it wrapped up and everything calm on the ground by the time these young soldiers had healed and started re-integrating into society.

Now, that aside, we have not seen much in the way of administration photo-ops with maimed soldiers. A brave and forthright man at the helm of the mightiest country on the planet could do enormous good both to the soldiers who have been maimed and to the country at large by showing up at the side of soldiers, like Pfc. Garth Stewart, and thanking them for their service. Obviously it would be difficult not to come across as condescending and self serving by doing such a thing. Such is the price required of leadership.

Posted by filchyboy at July 20, 2003 11:35 AM | TrackBack