In my neverending quest to finish up magazine articles I've started, I picked up a (few months) old Esquire this morning and completed reading an article started back when the magazine issue was new.  The article was called "Stories My Father Told Me" and it was written by Tyler Cabot.

Cabot explored several things in the course of the finely written article: his ambivalence about his father's chosen profession of defending large corporate clients as a litigator, his father's choice to represent one of the detainees at Guantanamo, and the ways in which our choices shape us.

At the end of the article was this elegant quote:

"There are inflection points in the life of a man, or in the life of a country.  That is, there are points beyond which things will never be the same.  Once you've taken responsibility for someone's life and freedom in a challenge to the authority of your own government, torts and contracts and product liability might lose a bit of their urgency.  Once a man has changed, it can be hard to reconcile his old self with the new.  Once a country has changed, it can be unrecognizable to those who thought they new it best."

In a few short sentences, Cabot captured exactly what I was feeling during much of the Bush administration's pursuit of war in Iraq, in its detaining without counsel, charges, trial dates or judicial oversight of "enemy combatants," in the way the "war against terror" seemed to trump any niceties like constitutional rights or obligations under the Geneva convention.

it may seem like the time for reading this article is past.  Bush is out of office, Guantanamo is slated to be shut down, the Obama administration is figuring out how to best prosecute the detainees that warrant prosecution out of the hash they were handed. 

But I found the article timely for two reasons:

1.  It reaffirmed why I voted for Obama instead of McCain (and why I never voted for Bush).  --and here's where Steve can begin shouting-- I believe that there are some lines that Obama will not cross.  That transparency is truly his goal and that he's young enough at this game not to compromise our core principles for consolidation of power and the illusion of security.  I didn't recognize our country under Bush.  I'm starting to recognize it now.

2.  As someone who has profoundly changed due to my life being turned inside out/upside down within the space of a few days--I find that there was a great deal of resonance for me in the idea of inflection points.  There are changes that shift us to our core.  Where some things are just not interesting anymore (zombie movies in my case) and others become more profoundly important (family, friends, a day in the sun, birds, butterflies...I could go on.)

Bravo to Tyler Cabot for writing the article and to his father for representing the "unrepresentable" pariah--an enemy combatant.

 


Comments

Steve

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:00:50

No, I won't yell - there's no reason to. Why bother?? You, and SO many others on the Left, just maintain a worldview that, to my eyes and judgment, is simply false to fact. What do I mean? SO many things you (and other Lefties) can't seem to understand - like "Constitutional Rights" for terrorists and "irregular warriors." Our Constitutional rights derive from our consensual membership in a society (the "social compact" theory of government works for me) where such rights are honored. To even argue that they would inhere in homicidal, racist terrorists who saw the heads off of captured soldiers and NEWSMEN, for God's sake, and believe in a Medieval religion which supports stoning gays to death and beating rape victims for their "adultery," who despise and desire to utterly destroy the very system and society that you would have extend these rights to them, is, to my way of thinking, "magical thinking" of the most silly sort. "We have to treat them as if they were civilized, and then they will be." Good luck with that. Unfortunately, the naïveté of the Left will undoubtedly get more Americans killed by refusing to accept the sad truth that the only way to deal with these people is violently and permanently. They are ALSO not entitled to any protections under the Geneva Conventions - they are not signatory parties, nor are they, as "irregular" warriors, entitled to the protections required to be given regular soldiers.

But what REALLY cracks my ass up is the "magical thinking" of you Lefties around "The One." He is NOT dismantling Gitmo (even his own party knows better than that shit). He has continued rendition, holding captured combatants without trial, most of Bush's intelligence procedures (including wiretaps, etc.) He's about as "transparent" as a brick - just check out what his Administration is doing re: inspectors general. No more earmarks, he promised. How's that working out, again???? ALL BILLS will be posted on the Internet for at least 72 hours before a floor vote in Congress, he and Nancy Pelousy promised. There wasn't even a copy of "crap and tax" available to the HOUSE when they voted on that POS. Our "stimulus" spending was going to be posted on the Internet, "so [we] can track every penny." Oops, not so much. But because we elected the first Black President (who also happens to be a radical socialist who knows exactly dick about economics and most of the history he "knows" is flat WRONG), we'll all have rainbows and unicorns. Good luck with that, too. He "can't interfere" with nutjob mullahs in Iran murdering peaceful protestors, but he has no problem intervening on behalf of a (fellow) socialist would-be dictator who was kicked out of office BY HIS OWN PARTY for attempting to subvert the Honduran Constitution. By the time this idiot finishes destroying our economy, our health care system and our standing in the world (boy, he sure impressed the hell out of the Russians, didn't he?????), maybe even you Lefties will be forced to admit that he's just a naive, incompetent empty suit.

 



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