10 September 2003

Khalid Rosenbaum

Oh, I slept hard this morning. I was up with the alarm, and I heard Vicki Barker 's voice from London. I laid down, just for a minute, because it had actually been cold on the balcony and it chased me right back to the safety and comfort of the eiderdown. I listened to Vicki's voice as I huddled. First chill. She had a good show, at least as best I could tell from that twilight zone of soft warmth. I heard her make an exchange with someone that was almost lyrical in its construction but I cannot remember for the life of me what it was. It was just good to know that she was back.

I finally rooted myself out of the comforter with Garrison Keeler and the Writer's Almanac. I knew that I would not have the time to do anything worthwhile and scrolled through the New York Times while Rich Hunter and Carl Castle walked me through the traffic and news. I felt foggy again. It had been Monday Night Football, that was what violated my usual early collapse, and last night I had been invited to a gathering of intellectuals downtown at a sidewalk café called Levante's.

I sipped coffee and saw that it was on this day in 1919, that Gen. John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the United States 1st Division during World War I marched up the streets of New York in a paroxysm of patriotic joy. The soldier included picked units of the six divisions that Black Jack had led overseas, through the cataclysmic last year of the struggle to overthrow the Kaiser. There was much to celebrate. In the ten months since the struggle ended the great influenza pandemic had raced across the world. Hundreds of thousands died right here in America, far more than America's losses in the trenches of France and the Low Country.

Since the struggle had been billed as "The war to end wars" the organizers of the parade quite logically thought that there weren't going to be any more of them. So this being the last one, they decided to do it up right and that is why they were willing to wait so long to have it. So it was ironic to see the lead stories in the media. The dragged the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Chairman up in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was not a pleasant our hours for the distinguished Defense guys. They had a sobering story to tell, and the Presidnet's request for $87 billion was on the table. The Chairman said that of the Army's 33 active-duty combat brigades (5,000 soliders each, about) 21 are assigned overseas. Sixteen of them are in Iraq. Of those not deployed, most are already earmarked as replacement forces for other missions. Only three are considered to be available for other contingencies. SecDef Don Rumsfeld has taken swift and dramatic action to relieve the stress to the active force. I'm frankly surpirsed they let me retire, not that I was much good to the Navy anymore. They could pay three solders for what they were paying me to go doze through afternoon meetings. But the steps SecDef has directed are enough to warm the cockles of a defense contractor's heart. He ordered the armed services to outsource every desk job they could identify, and at the hearing DepSecDef Wolfowitz pleaded with the Senators to grant the Pentagon the authority to transfer as many as 300,000 administrative positions to civilians. They are unlikely to hire that many new federal workers, so looks like business is going to be pretty good for us Parkway Patriots.

We talked about that and other things in the pleasant evening air last night. We were on the boulevard just south of DuPont Circle and the foot traffic was eclectic and as interesting as the men at the table. There was
Salman, a secular Muslim with a dry wit who is originally from the Indian-occupied part of Kashmir. "Isn't everyone from Kashmir these days?" I thought to myself. He just secured a position at the World bank. There was a quiet fellow from USAID worker who specializes in Latin America and loves the rodeo. There was an ironic discussion at the table over martinis about who was the leader national expert on chemical warfare, either Will, the PhD Chemist from Georgia Tech or Joel, who used to work for me at the Department. His real specialty is pediatric medicine and he looks like a movie star. And of course my friend Richard, who invited me to the monthly session for drinks and discussion. Richard was the ER doc on duty at Sloan- Kettering two years ago tomorrow, when the world changed.

We naturally got around to talking about it. Joel heard something was going on and he raced around the Headquarres of the World Health Organization in Genva to find the only working television. Richard saw the tower come down and panicked when he realized that he was the only MD on duty and that the casualties were about to start flowing in the door. Mass casualties. In New York. I was with the Director of Central Intelligence, trying to set up a phone list in an underground bunker that normally served as the Agency print plant. I watched the floors begin to pan-cake down on Tower Two over the DCI's shoulder. And all the while the Pentagon was burning just down the road and my friend Dan was already dead. Salman watched the towers come down from the veranda of his office building over Grand Central Station, a ringside seat. Richard said that not a single casualty appeared at the hospital. It was sort of a binary catastrophe. You either walked away or you died instantly.

The guy from USAID had an early meeting and he was the first to rise. As he gathered his papers he dropped something. I picked it up and saw that it was a flyer to advertise a series of anti-war rallies in town. The protests are are sponsored by an outfit called "DAWN," which means the DC Anti-War Network. They are going to decry the President's conduct in a teach-in remaniscent of the Vietnam days. The call it "Lies, 911, and the War on Iraq." They will be at the White House at noon tomorrow, and at Dupont Circle at six tomorrow night. I won't be there, of course, since I am going to Chicago to participate in the dedication of a memorial to the dead. You can check them at their web site at www.dawndc.net if you feel like it. I  provide the URL because I read the list of distinguished speakers who are to harangue the crowds. It includes a fellow named Khalid Rosenbaum.

The table erupted in laughter. Khalid Rosembaum. Now that must be one conflicted guy, we roared. Salman wore a thin smile. "Like Kashmir, perhaps" he said in round tones. Or the West Bank, I thought.

On the way back to the Metro Richard and I talked about a promising new drug that could counteract the effects of exposure to radiation. It is the first such compound that has been found, and trust me, they have been looking hard for a long time. We parted in the cool darkness with a handshake. It occurred to me that Salman won with the best 9-11 story,  because he saw it live and in person. And as I went down the escalator into the station I smelled the acrid smell of an electrical fire. I don't know it that is why I thought about it, waiting there with the faint but unpleasant odor. Edward Teller died yesterday. He was ninety-five. He made a major contribution to the invention of the Hydrogen Bomb. Otherwise, the tip home was uneventful but that is why I am running late.

I'm late and it is so nice outside, crisp and blue I feel like walking to work. It was just this nice two years ago. Many people walked to work that day, the air crisp and the hint of glorious fall in the bottomless blue sky. Most people walked home, too, though not so many as started.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra