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02 October 2005

Six Legs and Three Heads

Any day I don’t learn something new is one wasted, I think. But I was not completely prepared to learn the new rule-of-thumb in forensic examination this morning. I opened the Times and poured rich, hot coffee into my gullet. The police in Bali found a total of "six legs and three heads.” No torsos. That is the critical indicator of suicide bombers.

That is useful information, I thought. The authorities reported that one of the heads was thrown seventy-five feet from the point of the explosion. The pattern of the explosion was such that the features were recognizable, and were used on television to solicit information from the general public. At the beach-side restaurant in Jimbaran, near the Four Seasons hotel, two heads and two sets of legs without torsos were discovered in the debris, he said. This indicated two suicide bombers carried out the attack there, he said. At Raja’s restaurant in Kuta square an amateur video captured the arrival and detonation of the bomb-on-legs. The restaurant is flanked Kentucky Fried Chicken and a McDonalds.

The forensic fingerprint, so to speak, was the same. Just two legs and one head, though

I was paying particular attention to the news from south Asia, since my older son was out there last week, spending a week dipping his toe into one of the nations that is part of this struggle. I was nervous about his going on the trip, though I tried to put a pleasant face on it. It is much harder, I have found, to watch someone you love go off and do something than it is to do it yourself.

I am very proud of him, and the way he conducted himself overseas. I was pleased that he was back for a splendid football weekend. My Wolverines, and those of my son, were playing in East Lansing, at the home of their cross-state rivals. It was a glorious day, and my younger son sat in the stands with 60,000 close friends, pulling for his Spartans.

They began their tailgate with icy-cold beers at about eight o’clock in the morning, as best I could tell from the noise in the background when I talked to him on the cell phone. They were confident, and hungry for victory. I dropped off my older son at a local watering hole to meet some friends, watching the game on the big screen. I went on with my weekend routine, trying to stay above the fray and the emotion. Starting the beers that early is out of the questions, unless I am actually there. Besides, it was lovely in Virginia, one of those heartbreakingly beautiful days that presage the loss of the leaves and the coming of the winter.

It was altogether too nice a day to spend indoors. There will be plenty of those coming. I turned the game on in the background when I got back from the commissary and the PX gas station. The sun is edging to the south in its transit of the heavens, and the bulk of the west wing of Big Pink now shadows the patio all through the day. The pool is in shadow, too, under its green cover where the first brown leaves skitter in the breeze.

The game was ferocious, and I alternated my attention between touchdown drives and analysis of the political intramural follies in town. It may surprise you to note that there are mountebanks and scoundrels here in Washington, though I imagine that there is enough humanity in them that they too were enjoying the beauty of the day.

Ambition is not a bad thing, and goodness knows there are some ambitious characters here in town. It is only to be expected, with such energy and so much of the taxpayer’s money laying around. But something starting to unravel here. There have been arrests and indictments, and the prospect of more of each. I spent too long as a rigidly non-partisan public servant to feel
comfortable shrugging into the mantel of party affiliation. Suffice it to say, in shorthand, that I have always voted for a strong national defense, for the prompt delivery of the mail, and stout fiscal responsibility.

I was also always alert for the undermining of the Constitution, and particularly the articles of the Bill of Rights. So forgive me if I seem intemperate. I am no apologist for the party out of power, at the moment. I was on the Hill in the days of their ascendancy, and I marveled at the casual air of corruption that went along with five decades of leadership in the Congress. It was a sense of entitlement.

I have to say, though, that they were more fun to travel with. They had a positive knack for living properly on our fact-finding missions overseas, out of the public eye.

That ended with the Republican Revolution, enshrined in Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. He promised a straight deal, and an end to the arrogance of power.

It did not work out that way, or at least it does not appear to be. Power is a corrosive thing, and I am glad I have little of it to exercise. Given the opportunity, I like to think I would live up to the standards I admire. There are many good people in this town, and the public-spirit is by no means dead.

But the whiff of corruption is apparent, even above the delicious smell of a luncheon entrée. Signatures restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue was where our industry group used to meet before the downfall of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It was an impressive place and the food was pretty good. We paid for ours, though. Jack used his ownership to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars to the leadership of the Congress, and his tentacles spread wide.

He bought Congressmen to Micronesia and to Scotland for critical fact-finding, and the food was fabulous on those trips as well. I am sure it was coincidence that a Federal Prosecutor was fired in the Marshall Islands after he opened an investigation into one of the junkets to the island. Smilin’ Jack’s tentacles spread wide, from the Indian reservation to the Olde Course at St. Andrews. They smeared all manner of people, including House leader Tom Delay.

Another is David Safavian, head of the federal government’s procurement system. He was arrested at this home in Virginia the Monday after his abrupt resignation with less than a year on the job. He is accused of obstructing a federal investigation and making false statements under oath.

My faith in the people I voted for was shaken by the serene insistence on applying the supply-side tax cut agenda in the midst of a war. I like my money as well as anyone, and would be happy to keep more of it. But the debt that has been run up in the process is utterly unconscionable, and will weigh us down for decades to come. The energy policy- or lack of it, better said- is utterly baffling.

Synthetic fuels were supposed to be practical for production only when oil reached the lofty heights of $35 a barrel. With spot prices hitting almost twice that, I cannot understand why we are not moving aggressively to exploit the tar shale and natural gas, a resource we possess in relative abundance? Could we be in hock to Big Coal, or Big Oil, everything all locked up in nice and cozy?

Instead, the President wanted (briefly, I think) to send men to Mars, and still has $100 billion on the table to return to the Moon. It defies the imagination. Energy self-sufficiency will determine if the American golden age can continue, and with it, we could venture out into the wider solar system with confidence. But we seem unable to make a first step on that path.

I will not attempt to argue Global Warming. We have had ice ages without the interference of man, after all, but something is happening here on our planet, whether it is a natural cyclic change in the climate, or something else. I talked to a Nobel Laureate about the matter, and he is of the opinion that we should understand what is happening and adjust our policies to deal with the facts.

I have to agree with him. He is a lot smarter than I am, but it is useful to see that common sense is not reserved to the Laureate community. I blush to day this, but I believed the current rascals when they said they would provide a strong and agile defense, fiscal accountability, and honest books. I even heard the compassion word, and a commitment to public probity and high standards of conduct.

It appears that I expected better than what we got. I did some laundry and thought about the forensics of the situation. I think it will be pretty apparent in retrospect, where things went wrong, just from where all the pieces are found. I watched the tail end of the game, my stomach getting the old tense feeling of anxiety that has come with each big game for nearly half a century.

The Spartans did well against my Wolverines, and pushed the game to overtime. They were defeated by a field-goal, an unsatisfying outcome. The Spartan fans went deathly still when the ball went through the uprights, and I felt no joy at the victory. I knew how badly my younger son must be feeling. You just try to do what is right. I shudder to think what the consequences will be when these people are thrown out, and the old mountebanks and scoundrels are let back in? The debt that has been run up is high enough to drown in.

I don’t know how my sons intend to pay it.

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