A Leader Who Knew The Cost

I’m probably overdoing it with the history lessons today, but I think it’s necessary at the moment.

I could continue to rant about Dubya’s idiocy ad nauseum, and I realize it would get awfully boring for you, dear reader (to say nothing of boring for yours truly rehashing the continual missteps of this imbecile).

But as I’ve read about Dubya’s interview with Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” the other night (and again, call me any name you want, but I cannot listen to or watch this man), I keep hoping in my naïveté for some glimpse into this soulless shell, this deranged individual who thinks that bringing us to the brink of war with Iran is a viable response to his catastrophe in Iraq (hat tip to Prof. Marcus for this).

And what really drove home to me that our red-state president is out there in some scary place mentally is this excerpt in particular having to do with what he said to family members of those who’ve died for his illegal war (oh, what the hell: time to give Cynthia Sneed another boot – I haven’t done it for awhile now)...

It's uh (sigh), you know I, uh (looking to sky), uh, it's hard to, uh, for the family members to recount, uh, or relive their love in front of the President (shrug). Yet, you know once we get beyond the initial (pause), kind of meeting, it's amazing how strong the folks are and umm, they want to just let 'em, let me know a lot of things. They want me to let me know what their son or husband was like.

...Umm, (sigh) you know, you know a lot of them say, you know, Mr. President, don't, don't let my son die in vain.

“They want me to let me know what their son or husband was like.”

I’ve run that sentence around in my head about three times now, and it still doesn’t make sense (I suppose that it never will, assuming that that quote is accurate).

And in a related story (as they say), blogger Bill Robinson at HuffPo encourages Andrew Rove (Turd Blossom’s son) to be drafted into the Army and shipped off to Iraq (careful with that “d” word, though I think Robinson’s point is well taken).

Well, I grew a bit nostalgic after reading this, as I often do in the face of our present insanity (brought to us by Ms. Sneed and people like her). And what that happens, I recall how our forbears acquitted themselves when faced with similar circumstances.

And I immediately thought of LBJ; there were too many reasons not to.

And I went back to our somewhat-worn copy of “The Vantage Point,” because I could recall that Johnson expressed some sentiments about sending family members off to war (in the days of the draft) that should have served as the template for how all of our presidents should ponder this awful responsibility of sending our men and women into combat (though somehow I’m sure all of them did until the present pretender and his cabal took over).

I wanted to share this excerpt from Johnson’s book, since I believe it’s instructive (written about a hugely important day in Johnson’s presidency):

Our daughter Lynda had been flying all night from California on the “Red Eye Special.” She had just said good-by to her husband, Chuck, who was leaving for duty in Vietnam. Mrs. Johnson and I got up early and were waiting at the south entrance of the White House to welcome her home. When she arrived, a little after 7 A.M. that Sunday morning, we all went up together to the family quarters on the second floor of the Executive Mansion.

Lynda was tired, and she seemed lonely and bewildered. War and separation were cruel intrusions into her young life. The divisions in the country had left their mark on her, as they had on her mother and her sister, Luci. Lynda had been reading about those demonstrators and critics who looked on such sacrifices as hers and Chuck’s as meaningless, or worse. The hurt that had been building up inside her was now released in a flood of tears. Why, she asked, was her husband going away to fight, and maybe die, for people who did not even want to be protected? It was a question that might have been asked by any young woman who had just seen her husband off to Vietnam. I wanted to comfort her, and I could not.

That was the way the day started – March 31, 1968 – a day that I profoundly hoped would mark the beginning of the end of the war that had brought so much pain and anguish to the people of my country. The day marked as well the beginning of the end of my career, which stretched back over nearly four decades of public service.

After breakfast I went to mass with Luci and her husband, Pat Nugent, at St. Dominic’s. This was one of my favorite churches, a somber, gray Victorian-Gothic structure, with twin spires rising above the modern construction that was going up around it, in a poor section of southwest Washington. Inside St. Dominic’s was simple and restful. I had gone there on many Sunday mornings, and on numerous unreported occasions I had dropped in for a few minutes of prayer late at night. I went there with Luci just before midnight in June 1966 when we sent out bombers to hit the fuel dumps in Hanoi and Haiphong.

After mass was over and we were back in the car, I closed the glass partition to the front seat and told Luci and Pat that I had something to read to them and that I wanted them to listen carefully. As we rode through the quiet streets of Washington that Sunday morning, I read to my daughter and her husband the statement destined to change, to some extent at least, the lives of all of us. When I finished, there was a silence. I saw tears begin to form in Luci’s eyes, and I said to her that I thought this was what she had wanted me to do. Trying to smile, she said that her reaction was complicated. I understood. No matter how strong and simple the conviction, when you got right to the finish line it was complicated.

I suppose this excerpt thus far is a pretext to what I really want to mention below:

Looking at both of them, I experienced emotions too overwhelming to express. They were so very young, and they had such promising and happy lives ahead of them, if they were lucky. Pat already had his orders for Vietnam. In a matter of days, by his own insistence, he would be with Chuck Robb in action in Vietnam. The good Lord had blessed us with two brave sons-in-law, and no man could have been prouder of them than I. Now, for a year or more, their wives would wait and pray, as other wives across America would, for their husbands to return to them and their babies.

I was never more certain of the rightness of my decision. I was putting everything I could command and everything I had personally into the search for peace – not a false peace carrying the seeds of a new war, but a true peace forged to endure, with freedom intact. The speech I planned to make that evening would be, more than anything else, my pledge of faith to the Pat Nugents and the Chuck Robbs of our country – and to all of the brave young men and women of their generation.

I thought it was important to recall the process by which Johnson deliberated over his actions, prayed over them (back when nobody proclaimed their faith because most people considered it to be showing off over a private matter), and sought the feedback of family members, discussing his own conflict as he did so. I thought it was also important to portray Johnson’s sense of shared sacrifice in the most divisive war this country had seen until now.

All of this is missing when we see Dubya in action, of course. In place of careful consideration, we see tragically erroneous stubbornness bordering on (perhaps) psychosis (I’m not a health care professional, so I can’t make that diagnosis, as much as I’d like to try).

And when Lyndon Johnson, a far better man than Dubya could ever be despite Johnson’s many flaws, gave his resignation speech on the night of March 31, 1968, he didn’t mutter “um, um, um,” shrug his shoulders, or look incoherently off in another direction in avoidance. He spoke with purpose and conviction, doing what he thought was best for the country.

And to say I dream that Dubya would one day follow Johnson’s lead is the hugest understatement I can make.