WHAT PRICE GLORY?

Oh, how quickly and steeply rises the cost of enticing naïve, earnest young people to participate in our immoral military venture in Iraq.

Back in the Halcyon days following the September 11 attacks, idealists gave up job and family to fight against whoever the Bush administration pointed them at. Pat Tillman, poster hero for this phenomenon, tore up a multimillion dollar pro football contract to become an Army Ranger and fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. When he was killed by friendly or not so friendly, friendly fire, military script writers went to work and fashioned up a John Wayne To The Rescue finish for Ranger Tillman, turning him into a military recruiter’s dream. The truth, which may include homicide of an administration icon about to come out against the Iraq war, has yet to be revealed.

Now, after months of not meeting their recruiting goals, the military is offering staggering bonuses of $20,000 for new recruits to start their basic training early. It’s working as July will break the downward enlistment cycle and meet its quota.

These enlistees have no idea of the Devil’s bargain they have made for roughly a year’s salary up front. They will be sent to fight in a 130 degree killing field ignited by their Commander In Chief for a variety of reasons known only to him and his war cabinet. If they aren’t killed, maimed or otherwise injured in their repetitive and extended tours to prop up a disintegrating military, they will return with a significant risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, ticking time bombs created by the horror of needless war.

And when we launch our second senseless war in Iran, the price of procuring rent-a-soldiers will no doubt rise again. Oh, when will they ever learn?

Originally published in Glen Ellyn Sun, September 7, 2007

THE AUDACITY OF AUDACITY

Presidential contender Barack Obama is the product of an interracial marriage.

Besides possibly making him the first president of African American descent, it is significant because of his position on gay marriage.

As a supporter of his campaign, financial and otherwise, I am dismayed at his opposition to gay marriage.

Candidate Obama prefers instead to support “civil unions” for gay couples.

When Obama’s parents were married in the early 1960’s, interracial marriage was illegal in almost half the states and violence directed against interracial couples was not uncommon. Obama’s parents were wise to meet and become a couple in the progressive state of Hawaii, far removed from the virulent racism of many mainland states.

As interracial marriage was becoming fully legal during the 1960’s, there was no talk of a compromise “civil union” category for interracial couples. The civil rights struggle sought the end to all vestiges of “second class citizenship”. The idiocy of devising a face-saving term other than “marriage” for interracial couples simply to assuage the sensibilities of unrepentant racists, was clear to all normal people.

Over forty years later every serious presidential candidate remains publicly against gay marriage, not because they necessarily oppose it, but because they believe supporting it makes them unelectable. We who supported John Kerry in 2004 understood and accepted his lying when he uttered his opposition to gay marriage in his futile attempt to become president.

Because of his unique origins, it is tougher to accept Obama’s fib when he offers that position. Would his parents have accepted merely a “civil union” license when they were tying the knot. Would Obama be proud to talk about when his parents were “civil-unioned”? Probably not.

Maybe its time for a candidate with so much hope and positivism to have the audacity to break one of the last taboos in American politics. If he does, he will be standing up for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”. That may not make him Superman, but it will make him a super man.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, September 5, 2007