06 September 2006

Get a Dog

President Truman was right about Washington when he said "if you need a friend, get a dog."

It was kind of a sore subject. The dog had ended his visitation with me and returned to life with the ex, whizzing away into the darkness. It was lonely in Big Pink with no one depending on me.

Me and my six hundred friends were about the closest thing you could get to a dog, this week. We were invited under the auspices of a retired officers association, and I guess they figured we were foursquare behind him on the war.

I was more than an hour early, and that is why we all traveled in the rain to the Capital Hilton downtown for a major policy speech on the global war, which got a new definition.

The hotel is all of about three blocks from the White House...it was crawling with security. Men and women in severe suits and ear-pieces were everywhere. First off was the requirement to deposit our umbrellas with the hat-check people.

I did not think that was unreasonable, considering the time and what they resemble. But it was raining, and as they piled up on the check table I realized I was going to have to abandon it to its fate, or spend an hour waiting to tip someone a buck for an item I found in a cab for free.

I figured I could also get another cab, you know?

Anyway, we identified ourselves to one group of screeners with clipboards, and then up some stairs for the serious roster check, identification, and metal detector. It was a lot more courteous than the airport, but not a lot different. I saw some of the generals I had worked for in previous lives, and they had to go through the metal detector, too. They are starting to look old, I thought, avoiding my reflection in the crystal vases.

When I got through the second identification check-point, and produced my retired ID and passed through the metal detector, I wandered past the camera crews and their gear being sniffed by an eager German Shepherd. Arriving at the ballroom, I found that the good seats were taken or reserved for someone important. Considering how early I was, I was a miffed.

Camouflage uniforms  took of the front five rows, and I could see that room had been made for wheelchairs. There was a wedge where all the seats had little flyers marked "Diplomatic Corps."

It was interesting how the advance people had stacked the audience. I found the wedge with unassigned seats for extras like me. I went for the primest seat left for the taking. I like to sit down front if I can, since that normally means I don't fall asleep.

I also try to find an aisle seat, since they squish them together and there is nothing worse than sitting between a couple retired colonels, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh. With an aisle seat you can scoot it out a little and relax, a little like being in an exit row on an airliner.

Then there was nothing to do but wait. The actual start time was unknown. There had been an e-mail announcing noon, which I presumed was the time they wanted the fish in their seats, and I was canny enough to bring a magazine to read in the long wait. A tinny recording of John Philip Sousa marches was plying in the background someplace. For the life of me, I cannot get the "Stars and Stripes Forever" off my brain.

"Be kind to your web-footed friends," goes part of the refrain, then:
"For a duck may be somebody's mother...."

I saw Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff scoot in, and the man next to me said he had seen Senator John Warner, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee somewhere in the crowd along with Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General.

I figured Secretary Chertoff was a good bellwether for the real start of the speech, and sure enough, he was right on the money. A couple men with earpieces came out and checked the microphone, and a few minutes later a kid with a blue book appeared and placed it respectfully on the podium. It looked heavy enough to be a major policy speech, and the crowd was growing restive.

At precisely sixteen minutes past the hour, the retired general who heads the association appeared, and began to speak into the microphone, and a moment later the leader of the Free World appeared next to him.

Sure enough, the topic of the speech was the global war on terror, or rather on what he was calling Sunni Islam Extremism for the first three quarters of the speech. Then he bashed the Shia and Iranians for a while, who have “hi-jacked a great nation," which is true; after all Hezbollah has killed almost as many Americans as Al Qaida...

I could do the speech transcript here, since I dutifully copied, listening carefully. It was a major policy address, after all, but it might be better to just give you the link to the new National Strategy on Combating Terrorism, which is an unclassified version of the document that has been kicking around for years.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006/index.html

That would pretty much sum it up. I know the talking heads on the media have looked it over, and later they talked a lot about why the President gave the speech, and what the mid-term elections meant, and how it was pitched to a “retired military audience.”

They said it a little disparagingly, but I will grant you that we didn't have anyone jump up and quibble with what he was saying. For the first time. I actually heard him talk about Sunni Islamic Extremists, which took the first three-quarters of the speech, and then about the Iranians, and their surrogate Shia Islamic extremists like Hezbullah.

I was encouraged. Perhaps we will learn more about Sufis and Wahabbis and Moudoudi Islamic people in the next fireside chat. As I understand it, only two of those three want to kill us all. I'm interested in learning which they are.

Both, or maybe all three Presidents of the United States were there. There was the one who stumbles a little on the speech, and you wind up rooting for him to finish. Then there is amiable but resolute one, who displays something so fundamental and righteous that he convinces you he really believes things are as simple as he says.

We did well, much better than that awkward half the audience standing and the other sitting during the State of the Union Address. We are a friendly audience to our Commander in Chief, almost disproving Harry Truman's wisdom.

The third President is the charismatic guy who plunges into the crowd to meet the troops. We didn't see him until the speech went its forty minutes and the blue binder was closed. We stood at the right places and clapped, which was awkward with my pen and notebook.

The President was at his best when he plunged into the crowd of warriors who bussed in from Walter Reed in their cammies. The President must have spent ten minutes in their midst, gripping their hands, and having his picture taken.

Based on my Washington insider seating, I almost blocked the way of the Attorney General of the United States, who bustled past me in the wake of one of his pilot-fish Justice Department kids. He seemed to have someplace he wanted to be, and was not interested in the gripping and grinning. I was able to sidle forward and get close to the President as he worked his way slowly toward our side of the room.

I am a jaded old bastard, but I did catch his eye, just for a moment, and gave the Third President a wave. I think a caught a flash of sincerity in his grin to me. Sincerity is everything here, and once you can fake that, you have it made.

Of course, perhaps he was being serious. That is one of the things you can't tell about Mr. Bush, like the backrub he gave the German Chancellor at the G-8 conference a couple months ago.

After the President and all the security people were gone, six hundred of us were locked in place until the motorcade departed. I was stuck down front in the knot of soldiers. One of them was in a wheelchair, horribly blown apart and not completely zipped back together. There was a scar all around his face, his arms ended in limp flippers and his left leg was gone below the knee.

I touched him on the shoulder, gently, because there did not seem to be anywhere else to touch. I thanked him, knowing there wasn't anything really I could say that meant anything. He nodded, and it occurred to me that only advances in battlefield medicine had permitted him to be here. I patted him softly and moved toward the door.

I knew the motorcade was gone because the crowd suddenly flushed out of the glittering ballroom and filed down the grand staircase. There were six hundred people in the coat-check line to get their umbrellas back, and only one man to serve all those orange tickets.

I think he was in his late seventies, and he wore a tie-clip of an antique design, in the shape of a silver crossed knife and fork. I imagine it was awarded on completion of a successful career in the food service industry.

I decided to donate the umbrella to the hotel, and walked back to the office in the rain. The streets were deserted, and oil on the pavement gave it a rainbow shine.

As I walked the water beaded up on my glasses. I didn't mind. So many have given so much more in the last five years. As I walked along, I thought that it must be nice to have a dog in this town.

At least there would be someone to talk to.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com


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