Remembering where we have been

They do it at Home Depot, Lowes and OSH.
They do it at Office Max, Staples and Office Depot.
They do it at Target, K-mart and WalMart.
They do it at Kroger, Safeway and Albertson's.

They do it to every new employee at practically every major retail outlet in this country.

We need to do it to the president. Annually. After all, he is running the country.

How about it, Mr. Bush? Wanna submit to a drug/substance test?

The U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq without the approval of the U.N. Security Council was "illegal," Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC on Wednesday.

"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time -- without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community," he said in an interview with the BBC World Service.

The U.N. Charter allows nations to take military action with Security Council approval as an explicit enforcement action, such as during the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War.

But in 2003, in the build-up to the Iraq war, the United States dropped an attempt to get a Security Council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not pass.

At the time, Annan had underlined the lack of legitimacy for a war without U.N. approval, saying: "If the United States and others were to go outside the Security Council and take unilateral action they would not be in conformity with the Charter."


Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever seen with any previous U.S. government, including during Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."



Mid-September 2004 was also the time when Bush's lead in the polls slipped to a statistical heat with Kerry. And it was before the vote counts were manipulated in Ohio to give Bush a second unearned term.

I didn't bother post the links but they're in my archives.

--the BB

A day late - updated with link

Pool photo by Chris Hondros (NYT)
The ceremony at the World Trade Center site on Friday,
eight years after the terrorist attack.

Bill in Portland, Maine, gives us "Questions Worth Re-Asking:"

Why did the president sit in that Florida classroom for several minutes after being told "America is under attack"?

Why did Rudy Giuliani put the anti-terrorism command center in the World Trade Center against the advice of experts who knew better?

Could there be any greater examples of heroism than the passengers who fought back on Flight 93, the rescue teams at the Pentagon, or the NYPD and NYFD responders who ran into the towers without hesitation because "It's my job"?

Father Mychal Judge: Saint...or Supersaint?
-
Why did firefighters have faulty radios instead of dependable ones, Mr. Giuliani?

And many others you can read here.


Yesterday was too busy and too long for me to post a decent memorial to that day.

Somewhere, God willing, I have a CD with my photos from St Petersburg, September 2001, and I will share them, but I have not seen it for a very long time. Here are my memories.

We were on our first visit to Rusia, seeing the sights of the imperial city. As we gathered for dinner two sisters came downstairs and informed the rest of us that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. This seemed so bizarre that we asked if it was some small private plane gone off course. No, they said, an airliner. In horror and disbelief we had a very subdued supper.

The last thing we would want to do when visiting a foreign city is spend time glued to the tube but everyone rushed back to their rooms. Seeing a disaster movie's special effects while reason says "this is real, not Hollywood," was so disorienting. The scope of it all was difficult to fathom. We were eight time zones ahead of New York so this went into the late hours for us. When CNN re-ran the same material, I switched to BBC. When both were endless loops, I began bouncing around in French, Spanish, and Italian channels where I could understand most of what they said. Exhausted with horror we went to bed.

Before we left the room the next morning we remembered that our new step-brother-in-law, Mike, was supposed to be at the WTC. We called home. Sister-in-law said that surely father-in-law would have told us. My ex reminded her that father-in-law did not tell us for months that his sister had died and asked for some follow up.

The Russian people were amazing. The compassion and grace they showed in our remaining days touched us deeply. Strangers would come up and offer their condolences. Our tour guide changed our plans that day so we could stop by the American Consulate. We visited a large produce market, stopped at a flower shop for flowers, then parked a street away from the consulate, walked through a school playground to get to the next street over, which was blocked to traffic, and approached. Expat Americans and Russians were gathered, laying flowers, standing in silence, weeping, praying, holding each other. Guards were everywhere on the assumption that any US outpost was a target.

I am no fan of Vladimir Putin as he appears to be an unreconstructured lover of permanent power. Even so, he was the first world leader to call the White House and express sympathy. By his order all the flags in Russia were at half mast. As our coach left the hotel that morning I saw the white-blue-and-red at half mast over the Winter Palace (Hermitage) and wept. Not one but five minutes of silence were called for at noon that day. We were, at that point, in the Russian Museum, working our way through the amazing exhibits with school children ahead of and behind us. Noon came and and complete silence fell. Long, total silence. The only sound was one American in our group who was clueless and kept asking questions of our guide who only nodded in response.

When we returned to the hotel there was a message on the phone in our room. The first four words are engraved on my memory. "Bill, Bob, Mike's OK." It was brother-in-law Bob telling us all we really needed to know. He elaborated a bit. We later learned from our stepmom that Mike was in the second tower. Folks had been drilled since the bombing back in 1993 (I think that was the year). Feeling the neighboring impact they immediately began to evacuate. They took the elevator part way then the stairs. He emerged from the building and walked straight to his hotel and called home. I have never asked him about it. I know he fled amid falling bodies.

The fact that we had no idea how or when we would get home was disorienting but chump change compared the the awful reality, the stunned grief, the global uncertainty. Planes were not flying in the United States (if we ignore the one taking the bin Ladens and other Saudis out of the United States and why have we NEVER been given a good explanation of that one?). Our visas expired on Saturday so we had to leave Russia.

The first leg of our return occurred on schedule. We flew from Pulkovo Airport in St Petersburg to Helsinki. The original plan was to change planes, fly to JFK, then to LAX. Instead the travel agency that arranged this tour put us up in a hotel in Helsinki for two nights until we could all fly back to the States.

There was not much security in Pulkovo. There was overwhelming security in Helsinki. We went through metal detectors three times. If you did not look northern European your bags were examined (profiling of the most blatant sort). Dogs went by repeatedly. The airport was crawling with armed police and military. In the chaos that greeted us at JFK there was plenty of security but not as much as in Finland. We cheered when we touched down on US soil.

The return involved booking each leg when you got there. It was beginning to look as though we would not get the next connecting flight as a very inefficient and, yes I will say it, incompetent doofus fumbled. Finally one of the Finnair folks, having finished with his own passengers, stepped over and almost immediately got us on our flight to Los Angeles. More security. The wand was going off by my shirt pocket. I told the security lady that I had a piercing there. She groped me to verify it then let me through. (It is long gone.) Then I realized it was not that at all but the little foil-lined packet with a towelette that I had from the previous flight.

We finally got to LAX and forked over for a taxi to take us to my in-law's home. It was the wee hours of the morning and I don't recall how long we slept and how quickly we returned to the Bay Area where we lived.

Special prayers and sharing time had been arranged at St Cuthbert's while I was still in transit. (Thank you, Pamela.) I went through the phone book, looking for the nearest Mosque to arrange for some dialogue and diffusing of ethnic and religious prejudice. The world needed, and still needs, healing. The entire nation was grieving, processing fear, making choices on how to respond.

And the stories of heroism, tragedy, and dislocation kept unfolding.

I think I am grateful to have been so far away in another country (the land of the enemy of my childhood). Distance was a small cushion. We received support from total strangers, people who could not speak English, people who had been raised to think of us as the enemy, people who lived in the city besieged by Germans in WWII. Responses were personal, heartfelt, and free of agenda but they reminded me of the larger human family, of the mortality we all share and the compassion of which we are all capable.


Ultimately, there are no words - for that day or for the sorrows we humans inflict upon one another. I will close with this (which was posted by Elizabeth Kaeton).

Leonard Slatkin Conducts the BBC Orchestra on September 15 2001 in honor of those who lost their lives a few days prior. (Use this link if embed is not working.) Samuel Barber's Adagio:



--the BB

M le Président des États-Unis parle en Normandie

From left, U.S. President Barack Obama, Britain's Prince Charles, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrive at the American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur -Mer, near Caen, Western France, Saturday, June 6, 2009 to attend a ceremony marking the 65th Anniversary of the D-day landings in Normandy. (Francois Mori/AP Photo)

We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It's a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it's all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.

The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate and humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.

The nations that joined together to defeat Hitler's Reich were not perfect. They had made their share of mistakes, had not always agreed with one another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped. Citizens of all faiths and of no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free.

You may read the full text here:

American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur -Mer, near Caen

This blog honors the sacrifices made by all involved in that day that turned the tide of modern history and offers profound thanks to them.

O Juge des nations, d'un coeur reconnaissant nous faison mémoire devant toi, des hommes et des femmes de notre patrie, qui, à l'heure de décision, ont pris tant de risques pour la liberté dont nous jouissons aujourd'hui. Fais que nous ne trouvions pas de repos avant que toute la population de ce pays puisse bénéficier de la liberté véritable et accepte avec joie la discipline qu'elle impose. Nous te le demandons par Jésus le Christ notre Seigneur. Amen.

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

--Le Livre de la Prière Commune, 689 / The Book of Common Prayer, 839

--the BB

For All Who Serve

"Reflections" by Lee Teter
via this site
You may visit the Virtual Wall here.

On this Armistice Day (yes, I'm old enough to remember when that's what we called it), I honor and give thanks for every man and woman who has served this country in the military. I thank them for their patriotism, their courage, and their sacrifice. I pray for them in danger, terror, injured bodies, and haunted dreams. I vote for their pay, their arming, their care, and their veteran benefits. I offer prayers for their safety and their healing, their peace of mind and soul, their safe return, their joy in reuniting with family and loved ones. I am proud of them for all their virtues and their sense of duty.

None of this makes war any less than hell. And so I grieve. In an e-mail today to my ex I wrote this:

Well, here we are: Armistice Day, Veterans Day, X's birthday.

This means I am something of a weepy mess again.

Happens regularly this time of year and Decoration Day (Memorial Day), and sometimes in between. I want to salute them all as heroes and I want to hold them all and rock them in my arms, knowing that if they went into battle they will never be the same. And I mist up. Sometimes I break down into great sobs.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
---Wilfrid Owen

Arlington West, Santa Barbara, 10 December 2006

Grandmère Mimi has a lovely post and prayer for Veterans' Day at Wounded Bird.

Thanks to jcf for posting Owen's poem in comments at OCICBW.
--the BB

An old poem

Abba Poemen


Dozens of distractions beckon daily, calling me
Out of any purposeful path, saying, “Follow me!”

None of these alluring voices, each mimicking Jesus,
Offers more than a semblance of life.
They ask for my heart but offer nothing in return.

Giving my heart to you
Is scary beyond belief. Do not suppose I
Voice no doubts within my midnight mind,
Each quiet pause a chance to freeze with fear.

You did not ask for my heart, you
Only sent me a compliment,
Unaware of the reaction that would follow, the
Response that went from short notes to love poetry.

How many times have you wondered,
Every day, each night, whether there could possibly be
Any chance for happiness with a stranger from so far away,
Reaching in the darkness for a dream you long pursued,
Too tired to follow and too lonely to give up?

Touching you, eyes connecting first, then dreams, and
Only at the last fingers, lips, bodies,

There seemed some fresh new possibility on this earth,
Hope, long buried, bursting through the fertile soil of old decay.
And what my heart has yearned for seemed present with me
Those few days we were beside each other, facing life.

When I think of our comfort with each other, no need to
Hide anything, freely giving and receiving, playing with some grown-up
Innocence that knows of dangers yet feels strong and unafraid,
Chancing our emotions with each other, testing but not
Hurtful, I stand amazed.

Do you think I now will disbelieve what I saw and felt
Once time and distance settle in like dust to cover
Everything? Memory deceives but I am not that distrustful.
Sitting quietly, something I rarely do, I have a certainty.

Now is the time to see if we can build something
Over the miles, yes, and up close too.
To work together toward a common vision, if we can.

Surely we will test each other’s glorious strengths
And probe each other’s hidden weakness. Frailty too can serve
The good if it is embraced with wisdom and compassion, woven into life.
If we would know what is possible, we must seek what is possible.
Surrendering too soon to finding ways to deny, destroy, and part
Falls prey to all the old ways we have defeated ourselves.
You and I must seek what can be, we have settled far too long for lesser things.

You clown outrageously and make faces for my laughter, but
Oh, when you do not try for effect and simply smile, a radiance
Unfolds that cannot be measured. You also play with
Rage, a force I know and lived with, but not an anger that was cruel.

How far do we want to test, or see how much pain we will sustain?
Easy answers are useless. This I know: my heart requires
A solid sense that you want me. This I offer and know it is
Real: I want you, nobody else. This may change as we explore, but
This is the beginning and ground of the heart’s satisfaction here on earth.


June 14, 2002
[It is an acrostic. Slightly altered to remove names.]

“Do not give your heart
to that which does not
satisfy your heart.”

—Abba Poemen

Abba Poemen was one of the Desert Fathers
famous for his holiness and wisdom.
He lived in the 5th century.