Walter Sisulu is dead this morning, dead at ninety in South Africa. He was the deputy chief of the African National Congress. He had Parkinson’s at the end, a long decline for such a strong man. He recruited Nelson Mandella into the Party, and served a quarter century in the slammer on Robbin Island with the future President of an integrated Republic. That is a long time, a quarter century. A life frozen. The heart beats and nothing changes except your body. Time is a curious thing. Walter got a long life, even considering the twenty-five years he gave to his nation, and at the end he saw triumph. There is sadness in what was once a very different Pretoria, and that is not the only place there is bad news out of Africa this morning. Walter would not be pleased. They are fighting again in Monrovia, the city founded on the coast of west Africa to provide a home for slaves freed in America. It was named for President James Monroe, who recognized the evil of the Peculiar Institution, had a sense of what would eventually be required to rid the nation of the custom by force of arms. The Abolitionists hoped this might be the way out, short of mass violence. But it wasn’t. For a long time Liberia was a beacon of hope in the region, with a unique relationship to America. But now all the little countries are sliding into dissolution, Sierra Leone and Liberia just the worst of it.

There has been a lot of evil abroad while Saddam strutted his time on the stage and the media did not. I don’t know what we will do about it, if anything. I’m sure we could dig up another military governor someplace, but I am not sure we have the taste for landing the Marines again so quickly. So the little groups pile up their weapons and launch their battles and the little nations sink a little deeper into anarchy.

I don’t know what to do about Africa, and no one has asked me. The Colonel would have had an opinion, though, I’m pretty sure. I’d tell you his name, but that isn’t the point. You would know him, or at least a lot about him. He was one of us, a careerist who spent most of his lifetime in service to his country. As an Army officer, he started out in Vietnam, and stayed through the awful time after the trauma of the loss of Southeast Asia. I assume he did a short-tour in Korea, and tours in Germany when we still had a major presence. The Army and the Air Force after Vietnam had the luxury of focus on the Fulda Gap and the Soviets poised to drive to the Channel. It all counted toward the early retirement they confer upon the military, since it is a young person’s game, particularly and exclusively a young man’s game in the Colonel’s time.

The Colonel had a penchant for opinion, and he would have cared about the news today. Not that he is in a position to do anything about it now. I got an e-mail about him on Saturday, the morning I was crashing around trying to get to my flight out of Dulles and liberate my son from the University for the summer. I looked at the note and got the same feeling I do when something awful is reported on the radio. It reported the death in abbreviated shorthand, place of the viewing, time and date of interment. The essential data the family needed us to know but nothing of the context or the reason. If I had not been in such a hurry I would have paid more attention to it, and had I been in town, not frantically trying to get somewhere and back again, I would have stopped by to pay my respects. The Colonel service with honor.

The Colonel was retired by the time I met him, though he retained the bold crewcut he had worn when he was active. He was lucky enough to transition smoothly from his active duty to civilian service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He hung up his green blouse one Friday and came back the next Monday in a suit and tie. Same meetings, same players. He was by turns adversary and ally as things go in the vast Pentagon. I had a couple jobs in which I had to deal with his shop. A friendly meeting could go a long way toward pushing a budget initiative through the maze of the staff. An unfriendly meeting could get a project placed on the spike, stuck as firmly and hopelessly as an insect in amber. Lost in the timeless Pentagon process. Which is what it is about, after all. Time. Time served. The old saying for the careerists was “It all counts on twenty.” Even if what was going on at the moment was awful and uncomfortable. Deployed someplace, underway, or in the field, in danger. It all counts on twenty.

I learned a lot from the Colonel as I went to meetings with him over the years. It is always better to have friendly meetings, even if nothing vital is at stake. A courtesy briefing on a tangential topic could be a soothing break in the twelve hour days that are the rhythm of the Building. He was not old, as things go. We tend to leave active duty in our early fifties, and the Colonel was likely only in his early sixties, if that. The follow-up e-mail reported yesterday that his passing was unexpected and swift. A massive stroke got him. A collapse into a coma and he never came back to consciousness. Then he died, still with a full calendar at the office.

From what I heard there was a good turn-out from his colleagues and old comrades-in-arms. The family had him dressed in his Class-A Army uniform with all the decorations and badges shining. By report, all things considered, he looked pretty good. People being what they are, the viewing offered an opportunity for some networking in the policy community. There were several meetings conducted in the lobby of the funeral home over on Wilson Boulevard. On occasion the Colonel was left by himself, looking up, while business was conducted in the cloakroom. Time is precious and it all counts.

Interment is scheduled for Arlington National Cemetery in a week or so. It is unsettling to realize the number of people I know who now have it as their address. But it all counted on twenty, and I wonder at times why I am still doing this. Maybe the time I have left would be better served somewhere else, doing something different. That is what I am thinking on this drizzly Washington morning, but I don’t have much more time to do it. There is some retired Congressman we need to see down at the Building at eight, and a tour to give and the big national execrise about Homeland Defense next week.

It all counts on a life. The Colonel would tell you that, if he could.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra