27 June 2005
Marathon
They say this morning that suicide car bombers are neither depressed nor
distressed.
I imagine that could be true, though I have a hard time wrapping my gray
matter around it. I saw one of those internet stories over the weekend that
claimed some of the bombers were found with their hands shackled to the steering
wheel, and their last mission had been directed by Bad Guys with no interest
in dying. They who followed them to the target, detonating the bomb remotely.
The story claims the mechanism by which the unwilling are forced to drive to
the target is the leverage of a family held hostage.
I don't know. It is a good story, and helps dehumanize them. But it seems to
me that the targets are selected with a certain grim enthusiasm. The harvest
of this weekend is another four suicide bomb attacks, these in the North,
around the oil city of Mosul. There are reports of 38 dead, mostly Iraqi
security forces, and of course the injured are many more.
Don Rumsfeld was at his ruminative best on the Sunday morning talk shows
yesterday. My son told me about it when we talked yesterday. He got up to watch,
or perhaps he was just coming in as the Secretary was getting up. My son
said that Mr. Rumsfeld said the insurgency could go on for as many as a dozen
years.
I told my son it was chilling talk, but perfectly in keeping with the words
everyone has been saying since 9/11. “It is not a sprint to victory,” our
leaders said solemnly. “It is a Marathon.”
I heard it more than once, and I know the difference. Sprinting makes the
heart pound and the lungs burn. Training for a marathon involves something
else, something seductive about the miles beneath the shoes, looking down,
watching the asphalt blur.
It is an odd distance. Twenty-six-point-three miles was the course from the
battlefield at Marathon to the Acropolis in the middle of Athens. The
Persians had landed in 490 BC, and the Athenian men had marched out to meet them.
They drove the Persians back to their ships, and realized, suddenly, that it
was possible the enemy could sail to the undefended capital and rape and
plunder their way through the streets.
They were a philosophical bunch, the classic Greeks were. They were all
nervous about the fighting capabilities of the Persians, a line of thinking that
is still around today.
Some thought that surrender might be an option, and others reasoned that
giving up democracy and returning to an oligarchic form of government might do
the trick. But in the end a vote was held, and the majority decided to hustle
back to the capital just as fast as their legs could carry them, and save
their democracy and their homes.
Most of the Athenians made the distance, which in those days was at least an
eight hour march. They cut that in half, at least, which was the time I
always was shooting for when I could run. It is a risk pace.
It worked. When the Persian ships rounded the point, they saw the Athenians
waiting for them, well-flooded with dopamine.
In fairness, I should note that response to the brain chemical is different
for everyone. I am not talking about the gazelle-like Kenyans, or the other
emaciated real competitors. I'm sure their lungs burn in their hyper-developed
chests, and the sinews burn just like sprinter.
I am speaking in the context of my own experience as a plodder, a week-day
jogger with mild dementia and an increasing hunger for dopamine, the
neuro-transmitting brain chemical that moves the body.
Dopamine makes you feel good. It is said to communicate information from one
nerve cell to another, and can influence a wide range of feelings and
behaviors. For me, tickling the two small clusters of dopamine-producing cells deep
in the brain was what the whole running thing was about.
It would take a
mile or so for all the signals to reach the little masses, and begin the
chemical process of changing the amino acid into a substance called L-dopa, and then
into dopamine itself.
The dopamine plugs perfectly into receptors in specialized nerve cells. The
plug-in produces the famous runner’s high, a perfectly natural and quite
pleasant feeling of well being, almost invulvnerability. I can imagine how the
Greeks felt when they got home.
It is so powerful that it is an addition. As a plodder, an Irish draft-horse
of a runner, I managed my high so effectively that I did not feel the
interiors of my knees grinding themselves down. By the time I began limping to the
Pentagon Athletic Club to run my six or seven miles, I knew that I had a
problem.
I was reminded of that last night. The Czech lifeguard was tapping his toe
at the residents who were slow in gathering up their things by the pool. It
had been a pleasant summer day, and people were reluctant to let it go. I had
just time to slip through the gate, throw my towel at one of the poolside
tables and take a bold leap toward the deep-end to shock the nerves.
As I leapt, I felt something grind in the knee, something toward the back,
and the flash of pain mingled with the shock of the cool water. I knew I had
crushed something, and paddled around briefly until I could see the
displeasure growing on our young employee’s face.
I scuttled out of the pool enclosure a little side-ways, like a sand-crab.
Pain speared though the back of my leg.
I was not the last one out, which might have bought me a few points in good
will. I know the rules.
The plunge had not done much to change my brain chemistry, except to give it
the mental equivalent of a wedgie.
Flooding dopamine to the receptors requires roadwork, and I can't do that
anymore. I understand that other activities can stimulate the soft tissues, and
I am looking at my options carefully.
I am going to have to find a substitute, since doing the national equivalent
of a marathon will require something to dull the pain.
Despite the polls that claim public support for the war is dropping, there
are indications that the public is pragmatic about things. A friend reported
that he saw passengers give up their First Class seats for some troops coming
home on two-week leave.
President Bush is going to visit the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg in
Fayetteville, N.C., tomorrow. They say he is going to press for a large
continued military presence in Iraq. He is going to explain why his strategy is
going to take a long time, but will eventually work.
I think he is right. Given enough time, anyone can finish a marathon. But
like the Athenians, we will probably have to consider our options.
Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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