A few months ago I got a phone message from a Lieutenant Colonel who told me that I was being summoned to an administrative muster for reserve Marines on 22 Nov. “Don’t worry, you’re not being mobilized,” he said. “This is just an administrative process to make sure everyone’s info is up to date and inform you about some benefits.”

I wasn’t looking forward to driving out to Floyd Bennett Field on the far corner of New York City, least of all at 7AM on a Saturday, but they told me I’d be getting paid for my three hours of work, and that eased the pain. I taped the orders they sent me to the door to my room, lest I forget to attend.

At 7:15, I was driving south in my parents’ car since my own is in storage out of town. A lady on NPR was interviewing an Iranian American writer about how the Iraq war had destabilized the Middle East. Seemed appropriate.

As I drove south, the massive urban environment began to deteriorate. First I passed the Intrepid Air and Space museum where I had been a volunteer in high school. Then I drove past Ground Zero, and ducked into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I blasted south along the Gowanus Expressway, the remnants of 1950s industrial Brooklyn all around me. Soon I was on the Belt Parkway, cruising along the smooth blacktop that fronted Lower New York Bay, choppy in the morning’s rough winds. The houses were low, and there were no more big buildings. Finally I turned east, spotting Coney Island’s Ferris wheel and heading towards Jamaica Bay.

At the entrance to Floyd Bennett Field, once a Navy jet base and now a dilapidated public recreation area, I turned onto Aviation road and entered the small Marine Corps Reserve Center. I pulled onto the parking lot overlooking the bay and rolled the car to a stop. The sun was shining brilliantly off the water and I was staring at a large concrete building replete with parking spaces marked “S-4”, “XO”, and “1stSgt”. Except for the wind and NPR on my radio, it was silent. I could have been anywhere- Pendleton, LeJeune, even Camp Schwab, Okinawa. A Marine pulled up in a 2007 F-150 sitting on a huge lift kit. I’d never seen such a vehicle in New York City before, but there it was. Classic Marine. I went inside.

It took me a few minutes to remember how to read enlisted rank on collars. Suddenly I felt like a boot lieutenant all over again trying to count staff NCO rockers hidden on camouflage cloth, this sensation only heightened by the fact that I had unwittingly grabbed the khakis I used to wear as a young officer (which didn’t fit as well anymore) and instinctively put on the same old ugly brown shoes from the back of my closet. (Why do I still have this stuff?)

In the classroom upstairs, there were a lot fewer Marines than I had expected- only about 40. Staff sergeants in utility uniforms were organizing the Marines into groups, dispersing a small handful of forms to fill out, and moving us through a computer station where we updated our personal information. A gunny was collecting diplomas and transcripts to be added to our records. There was something I noticed right away, something I hadn’t seen in awhile. The Marines were interacting with us and each other with the utmost professionalism and they appeared to be making no extra effort to do so. I realized that this is who they were. This is how Marines are. How I was.

I took out some schoolwork while I waited for the brief to begin. “Yo, Ben,” I heard the thick White Plains accent to my right. I looked up and saw my buddy Greg from Iraq spitting into a dip cup. I had just seen him for the Marine Corps birthday a few weeks before, but it was good to see a friendly face. He sat down next to me.

Immediately, we were bullshitting again, telling stories from our deployment and impersonating the CO, as is our compulsory, near exclusive ice-breaker whenever we see each other. Eventually our conversation spread to the immediate seats around us- “who were you with” being the primary means of introduction. “I lost two guys,” Greg said, without looking at me. “I lost one,” I told him. We talked about how our three Marines had died. “I went to the funeral,” he said. “I gave his mother the flag.” He spit into his cup.


A LtCol, a tad heavyset by Marine standards, stepped forward and introduced himself. It had become clear that one of the goals of the muster was to try to recruit Marines off inactive duty into the Marine Corps Reserve, and even though I’d been looking for the right opportunity myself, I could do to skip the snow job.

The LtCol began to tell us about his own story- how he had been working for a major East Coast company who sent him to DC, and he had moved his whole family and bought a house, only to be laid off three months later. He called up Headquarters Marine Corps and they put him on a project as a part-time member. He wasn’t giving us a hard sell, and his demeanor was totally non-predatory. “I’m not trying twist anyone’s arm, or guilt trip anyone. I’m just telling you, the economy is bad, maybe you miss the Corps- there are lots of ways you can be involved. You should know about these opportunities, and don’t write them off.” Then he showed us a terrible video that made the same point.

Outside the wind was howling against the window, but the sun was still pouring in. It was 28 degrees and my coffee had run out, but I was sweating hard. I don’t know why- a slight twinge of nervousness perhaps, or just culture shock to have left NY City and arrived back on Marine Corps Base X, in bizzaro world. I looked around the room. We were huddled together, keeping warm, but also building some kind of temporary circle of trust like an AA meeting for ex-warriors and confused souls. “How many of you were on active duty?” the LtCol asked. All hands went up. “How many of you have been to Iraq or Afghanistan?” All hands went up.

On his reserve recruiting questionnaire, Greg had written “I want to go to Afghanistan and grow a beard.” He was half kidding. I wrote: “I’m interested in Afghanistan deployments.” I was not kidding at all.

At a lull in the conversation, a kid about 24 years old, wearing a NY Jets leather jacket and a tight-fitting Scout Sniper T-shirt raised his hand. In an accent that can only be described as “true New York”- that sort of old-school Irish and Long Island mix, he asked the following question: “Yeah, I’m a New York City firefighter, and I got out of the Marines with 60% VA disability. If I want to come into the reserves, can I do that without giving up my disability?” The answer was yes. What’s it like at FDNY, I asked the kid, having considered applying myself. “The guys I work with are disgusting,” he said. “I thought I was going to transition easily, you know looking for that camaraderie and professionalism… but it isn’t there. Nothing’s like the Marine Corps, sir.”


I walked downstairs with Greg, and we stopped to look at the photos that the local unit had posted on the walls. “You hear that Camp Fallujah is gone?” he asked. Our old haunt from 2004. No, I hadn’t heard that.

Outside, an officer who had been sitting near us drove away in a Toyota Tacoma, another classic Marine stereotype that was absolutely heartwarming to me. I squinted in the sunlight and got into my parents’ car. On the way home NPR had some food critics cooking with molecular gastronomist Wiley Dufresne at his New York City restaurant. They were talking about his “hollandaise cubes” and “bacon reduction”. The New York City skyline was beginning to dominate my windscreen once again.

This week, Somali pirates mounted in speedboats captured the 318,000-ton, Saudi-owned supertanker Sirius Star off Kenya. The capture of the Sirius Star, laden with two million barrels of oil and now anchored off Eyl- a sort of Somali pirate town- is the latest and boldest hijacking made by the increasingly prolific Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean corsairs. Looking at photos of the gigantic tanker, the circumstances almost seem absurd.

And while no vessel under American flag has been hijacked in the last year’s Somali piracy rampage, the interruption of the Saudi-US oil trade represents just as compelling a warning bell to America: we have wrung our hands over the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry to terrorist attack, as well as the strategic risks of transporting oil- our mechanical lifeblood- in and out of the Gulf and Red Sea. The capture of the Sirius Star represents both events simultaneously.


Ian W. Toll’s comprehensive and masterfully written book, Six Frigates, tells the story of how the American navy- today the world’s most powerful- came to be. The book, which draws heavily on primary source, explains the fierce political debate between pro-navy federalists like Adams and anti-navy Democratic-Republicans like Jefferson. The former viewed a central federal government as an essential feature of American sovereignty, and considered the protection of American trade to be a responsibility of the government that warranted the use of force, when appropriate. The latter was highly skeptical of centralized power and untrusting of a national government given free-reign to build and maintain a military.

But in the beginning, Adams and Jefferson, old friends and later political rivals, were united. In 1785, the American merchant ships Maria and Dauphin were seized by Algerian pirates, and their crews imprisoned. At the time, Algiers was one of the Barbary States that included Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco; these nation-states not only sponsored piracy as an official policy, but also relied heavily upon the tributes (bribes) that their piracy extorted from victimized nations.

Adams wrote to Jefferson and said that he believed America could take the fight to the Dey of Algiers if it invested itself completely, but that he doubted American citizens could stand such talk of renewed and extended war. He suggested that the tribute be paid. Jefferson thought otherwise: “It would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war. 1. Justice is in favor of this opinion. 2. Honor favors it. 3. It will procure us respect in Europe, and respect is a safe-guard to interest.”

The Algerian crisis of 1794 renewed discussion of building a blue water navy (forward deployed, cruising open ocean) and the decision to create a naval arm was passed into law in March of that year. And while the feud between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans would prioritize and then sideline America’s new navy as each party battled for control of the government, by the end of Jefferson and Adams’ lives, the US Navy would prove its relevance, helping bring the Barbary States to their knees, compelling the French to reduce the piracy of their privateers and warships during the Quasi War, and later in the War of 1812, identifying the need to better protect American shipping from the massive Royal Navy, then the world’s best, operating with impunity.

The US Navy was created to protect American citizens and shipping from pirates. Will it return to that role again soon?


Piracy, while illegal, represents a major influx of foreign capital into Somalia, a country that is too unsafe for exporters and even NGOs, thus leaving Somalia’s legitimate industries in atrophy and its humanitarian crises in neglect. And while pirate ransoms are untaxed, substantial duties are believed paid to Somali government officials, making it an unofficial but essentially sanctioned business, despite the fact that the Somali government does prosecute and lock up some pirates.

What can the world do about Somalia’s piracy problem? I believe there are four things:


Patrol

Just as the USS Constitution was dispatched to the Mediterranean to protect American shipping in the early 1800s, countries trading through the Red Sea and Indian Ocean will increase naval patrols to deter pirates from attacking and may increase hunting and capturing pirates. A combined task force (CTF-50), made up of European and American warships, is already in the Gulf of Aden area and the US military is also running the Joint Task Force in Djibouti (JTF-HOA).

Recently, a Danish warship captured some armed pirates but released them (without their weapons) upon realizing they had no authority to prosecute, and last month, French marines patrolling the Gulf of Aden arrested some pirates who they turned over to the local authority.


Contract

The way the pirates attack is by sneaking up at night, boarding with ladders and grappling hooks, and holding the crew at gunpoint. In the case of the Sirius Star, with a $100 million cargo that could cause a phenomenal ecological disaster if dumped, the stakes are even higher.

Contracted security guards should be fairly successful at repelling boarding parties with use of machine guns, optics, and other sensors, though I suppose the deployment of heavily armed forces on civilian shipping might butt up against international maritime law. But companies like Aramco, with $220 million at stake per laden supertanker (not to mention the crew), might find the cost and legal risk well worth the investment.

Indeed, a quick internet search reveals that Blackwater has already announced its availability to help secure merchant shipping.


Attack

After pirates captured a French yacht this spring and demanded a ransom for its owner and crew, the French military tracked the pirates and then sent commandos ashore to arrest them. Today the BBC reported that the Indian Navy ship INS Tobar sunk a Somali pirate vessel that threatened to blow up the Tobar.

In the absence of a stable government with the ability or resolve to shut down piracy, will foreign nations pursue pirates at will, on the shores of Somalia?


Tribute

America chose to fight the Barbary States but we may well choose to increase “aid” to Somalia, knowing full well that some of that money will go into the pockets of government officials or warlords in exchange for the suppression of piracy. This is the carrot approach and we’ve used it to pay all kinds of unsavory people, most notably Sunni ex-insurgents who used to attack Americans all over Anbar province, Iraq.


I believe countries with vested interests in the region will use a combination of all of the above. The best way to end Somali piracy however, would be a solution that benefits Somalis and foreigners alike: a rebuilding of the Somali government and economy. Diplomatically, we should make these the top goals of our interactions with Somalia. Militarily, we should put our professional, exceptional blue water navy to use protecting international shipping lanes.


Further Reading: BBC: Tanker anchors off Somalia NYT: Somali Pirates Telegraph: Pirates drive up shipping costs Telegraph: UK seeks arrest authority BBC: French capture pirates (4/08) BBC: French capture pirates (10/08) BBC: India sinks Somali pirates Wired: Blackwater to fight pirates Six Frigates

One America

In August 2007, I wrote a letter to our readers entitled “One America”, a term I used to describe the way we veterans see our country: non-denominational, indivisible, and uncorrupted by political identity. We look at our troops and cohorts and see uniforms, ranks, names, and personalities, not electoral votes or color-coded maps. They are Americans, or trying to become Americans, and that’s the only description they want.

Of the key themes in the rhetoric of President Elect Obama, from transformational change to self-reliance and self-actualization, the one that has resonated with me most has been his earnest belief in our country as a whole entity with a single soul, as One America.

Critics have called Obama a celebrity, a pop culture icon upon whom young Americans were naively projecting their own dreams and aspirations, a politician who offered a fairy-tale of hope, instead of a CV of legislative accomplishments. But what critics failed to appreciate was that Americans weren’t projecting onto Obama, they were identifying with him, because he was describing his vision of a single America, and lo and behold, it turns out most Americans want that as well.


A Call to Serve and to Act

I have served my country under a variety of leaders, not all of whom I voted for. But I cherished the opportunity to serve my country no matter who led it, and relished the fact that whatever leader was elected, to my preference or not, had been fairly selected by a majority of my countrymen.

Early Tuesday morning I thought about how no matter who won the election, my duty was to return to the service of my country and that I would do so with no regard for the politics of government, choosing only to focus on the problems and opportunities I could help effect. This attitude is common among veterans.

Likewise, I hope that all Americans realize that today, Nov 5th, is D-Day. Liberal, conservative, centrist: the election is just the beginning of the democratic process, not the end, and in fact, the election is the part that requires the least self-discipline and the least endurance. Democrats can’t just kick back and say: “I elected Obama, problem solved.” Nor can Republicans say: “My guy didn’t get in- I have no voice now.” Negative. It’s time to ruck up, find a problem you care about, and start the national dialogue. Are you going to conserve energy or are you going to wait for someone to raise the gasoline tax? Are you going to volunteer at a tutoring program or hope someone pumps some money into your school district? Are you going to live within your means or count on Congress to bail out your debt? Are you going to enlist in the military, or hope Bin Laden calls it quits?

It’s our country- not some politician’s and not the other party’s.


The Referendum on Racism and Grievance

Like many Americans, this election has been one of the most important experiences of my life. A large part of that is because this election did something no census or opinion poll has ever done: give us a unique and effective perspective on how race is perceived in America.

Whites represent about 75% of all Americans, and Barack Obama won 43% of their votes, which is more than every democratic candidate since and including Carter in ‘80, except for Clinton in ’96, who also won 43%. In addition, Obama won states like Iowa and New Hampshire that are nearly 100% white.

This matters for two major reasons:

1. This election serves as a referendum on the notion that America is an inherently racist country and that race still prevents Americans from evaluating each other on content and character instead of skin color. Are the legacies of slavery and xenophobia persistent? Yes. Do most humans, American or otherwise, still harbor prejudices, ranging from subtle to overt? Indeed. But will Americans’ prejudices prevent them from selecting the candidate they believe best qualified to lead our nation? Resoundingly no.

Consider the following: what is the most extreme, high-stakes test you could concoct to measure how Americans view the characters and capabilities of two strangers- one black and one white? What better test than to ask which they would elect to be the leader of their nation, especially in the most adverse and challenging times in recent memory- during war, recession, and declining influence? To protect the survey, you would conduct it in total anonymity. And that is what this election has been to me: a referendum on the commonly espoused notion that Americans are too blinded by racial motives to judge each other fairly.


2. Last week, I saw part of a film on the city’s public broadcasting channel that caught my attention. It was called Indoctrinate U, a compelling documentary about the prevalence of liberal crusading on university campuses and the condonation of bad behavior towards, and intolerance of, conservative opinions and student groups. In addition to serving as a wakeup call, it reminded me of the proselytizing about hawkish Neo-Conservatism, and the indictment of liberal points of view that I had witnessed in the military.

The part of the film that I found most interesting was an interview with John McWhorter (at the time a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley- now at Columbia). McWhorter was discussing a phenomenon he describes as the "cult of victimology", which as best as I can explain, is the characterization of the modern African American experience as exclusively unfair, persistently oppressive, and essentially unchangeable, thus compelling African American youth to think of themselves as aggrieved and to nurture that grievance instead of solving it.

I took several African American studies classes in college, one of which was an in depth look at slavery that greatly informed the way I perceived modern American race relations. To be sure, it’s impossible to try to understand the modern black experience without first understanding slavery, but after the McWhorter interview, I realized that I had also been deprived of another point of view- that in spite of slavery, in spite of racism, black Americans can be as upwardly mobile as they want, provided they are willing to define a realm of possibility that extends beyond the classical boundaries of grievance.

This election is a case-in-point to McWhorter’s assertion, and I heard the same denouncement of grievance by African American reporters and politicians throughout the day on MSNBC. When an African American named Barack Hussein Obama, raised by a single mother on food stamps, portrayed by his opponents as a “socialist” intent on extending the welfare state (wink wink), can be elected president of the United States- the most powerful leadership role in the free world- the self-imposed boundaries of grievance have been shattered.


It's D-Day. Time to roll up our sleeves.


Further Reading and Viewing: 2 Dinar: One America Exit Polls (NYT) Losing The Race, Self-Sabotage In Black America (excerpt) by John McWhorter Indoctrinate U

I wasn’t sure about the best way to organize our presidential endorsement. Cover the issues? No, that’s a personal preference. Dwell on leadership intangibles? Too subjective. Bring it back to foreign policy, war, and veterans issues, our core competencies? You betcha.


Foreign Policy

The three top issues of the Obama foreign policy agenda are:


1) Secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists

This is one of the major threats of the post Cold War era, one that is often overlooked because it isn’t as sexy as “hunting” Bin Laden or building aircraft carriers. The greatest threat to our physical security comes from terrorists and rogue states, and the greatest potential for damage comes from their acquisition of nuclear weapons or nuclear material.

Sen. Dick Lugar [R-IN] has a history of working on bipartisan initiatives in non-proliferation and threat reduction and has worked with several democrats including Sam Nunn and Barack Obama. In 2007, the two secured $48 million for Lugar-Obama, which will destroy heavy conventional weapons and intercept materials for mass destruction.


2) Pursue tough, direct diplomacy without preconditions to end the threat from Iran

Obama has stood by his assertion that he will talk to everyone, and that he will meet with allies and enemies alike, without preconditions. Critics said that was tantamount to appeasement, but former Republican secretaries of state James Baker and Henry Kissinger agreed with Obama, and Baker explained on Fox News that it was this very policy helped him bring Syria to the table with Israel.

With regard to Iran, hawks like to talk about “all options on the table”, and war-hungry Americans think this language represents the appropriate stance on Iran. Scott Ritter, former US Marine intelligence officer and a top UN weapons inspector in Iraq who decried the WMD claim before the Iraq War, said this about going nuclear on Iran: “For all those Americans out there who say ‘you know what, taking on Iran’s a good thing’… if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain’t going back in the bottle until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So tell me, you want to go to war with Iran- pick your city.”


3) Renew American diplomacy

The most embarrassing aspect of American decline over the last eight years has been the hubris that accompanied it and frankly, ensured it.

In a series of tactics he recommends to create asymmetric warfare, Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, also prescribes psychological operations: “Use humility to make them haughty.” We have done the opposite and our self-aggrandizement, unilateralism, mockery of the United Nations, and indictments of nations as “evil” have alienated allies and made it untenable for moderates in adversarial nations to support us. We’ve talked about isolating rogue nations, but we’ve instead isolated ourselves, with a culture of shoot-first, apologize-for-nothing narcissism.

McCain's saber-rattling and Palin's denouncement of Obama's plan to meet with unfriendly nations suggest a disinterest in pursuing diplomacy to its full potential. Even Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, light on foreign policy, called the Bush Doctrine “head in the ground” diplomacy, and his description was apt in more ways than one. Because when your head is in the ground, you’re showing the world your ass.


War

1) Iraq

It was wrong to invade Iraq because the reasons given (WMD, link to Al Qaeda) were both false, and have been discredited by both parties. Furthermore, the war has destabilized the region, increased Iranian influence and power substantially, placed strategic oil access in undue risk, and as mentioned above, isolated America because of its flawed Bush Doctrine.

Would Barack Obama have voted against the joint resolution authorizing Bush’s invasion of Iraq if he had been in the senate in 2002? That’s a hypothetical no one can answer. What we can ask is whether he appraised the situation correctly and displayed good judgment. He did:

"I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars."

What now?

Sen. McCain proposes to keep Americans in Iraq for 100 years. Even granting that he meant troops in Iraq with no more casualties, akin to our current stationing of troops in Japan, Germany, and Korea, how will he deliver the end of hostilities? And if the presence of our troops in those other countries is so controversial to their citizens (plans are in the works to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam), wouldn’t the presence of American troops in Iraq for 100 years be just as destabilizing as they were in Saudi Arabia, one of the key aspects of Bin Laden’s causus belli?

Americans don’t approve of the US war in Iraq and neither do Iraqis, who are pushing for us to redeploy completely by 2011. Bush’s objectives have been achieved but mission creep has compelled hawks to declare a functioning democracy in Iraq the only true victory, suggesting that anything less would be a “waste” of the lives lost in that country. With the attack inside Syria last week, a keen reminder of 1969 Cambodia, it seems we are fully committed to Bin Laden’s dream of exhausting ourselves and completely destroying our own reputation. Obama’s proposal for a safe, methodical, and strategically sound withdrawal is vastly superior to the demand for an indefinite or unspecified presence.


2) Afghanistan

Our obsession with Iraq has cost us success, or at least better performance in Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban attacks allied and Afghani troops with increasing lethality. Are we going to win this war? Ought we to try? Afghanistan represents the home of the organization that attacked us and intends to attack us again.

Obama has led McCain on the primacy and urgency of Afghanistan, the latter saying in 2003: "in the longterm we may muddle through Afghanistan."


Veterans’ Issues

As we’ve written about in the past on 2 Dinar, this issue is a slam-dunk for Obama, and ironically so, given McCain’s brand. McCain’s record is overwhelmingly consistent in voting against veterans’ interests and his ratings from the IAVA (D) and DAV (20%) reflect that. Obama has a consistent voting record on behalf of veterans’ issues (IAVA: B, DAV: 80%). Sen. McCain preaches from the campaign platform about his affection for veterans but he has opposed legislation that would buy body armor for the National Guard, fund VA health care, and scale up veterans' educational benefits. On the flip side, in addition to Obama's record, Joe Biden has made veteran health care a personal crusade. Of all the issues in this election, I have the least conflict over this one- the contrast is totally compelling.


Conclusion

The stakes for our country haven’t been this high in years, and we need intelligent, informed, and dedicated leaders who can communicate with the world and with us. Furthermore, soldiers and veterans need smart foreign policy, exhaustive diplomacy, and military action with vision and honor.

Finally, leadership goes beyond credentials and talking points. Leadership is about motivating people to do their best, setting a high standard, getting people involved, and compelling them to sacrifice for the greater good. Only one candidate in both fields this year has told Americans over and over again that they are going to have to sacrifice and work together to make America great. Only one candidate has suggested that instead of waiting for change, Americans ought to make change. Only one candidate got me out on the streets registering voters, and compelled me to redirect my career back to public service. Only one candidate sets an example of professionalism and dignity that I truly want to emulate.

I’ve never voted for anyone that I truly believed in; I’ve always picked the lesser of two evils.

But I’m not voting against John McCain this year.

I’m voting for Barack Obama.

Over the last week, I’ve exchanged about 15 outraged, scared, and confused e-mails with contributing writers to this magazine, and received or written myself, no less than three complete essays about the total lack of professionalism that the McCain-Palin campaign has displayed in their recent communications strategy. I decided not to print any of the essays because one sounded too much like a rant, one sounded too whiny, and one was trying so hard to be objective and unbiased that it failed to say anything at all.

So here I am, as an editor, trying to figure out what to do. Do I just let the politicians snipe at each other, and the news media pundits whine and accuse, and our country continue to be damaged by these Gross Rating Point and Gallup Poll crap games? Do I threaten damaging the non-partisan brand of this magazine by criticizing one campaign, and not the other, on admittedly subjective issues?

I’m going to write. Because this election needs some antiseptic and ultraviolet light.

When I logged onto the New York Times this week and found a piece on their election blog quoting Sarah Palin saying Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” (referring to Bill Ayers), I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that the Fox News agenda had actually become the main line of rhetoric for a potential leader of our country.

In today’s America, nothing is as scary as terrorism, and this fear is constantly stoked in all corners of our society. Terrorists have existed since time immemorial, but today, they present as real and highly probable a threat of physical violence to our country as any other- more so in fact now that the oppressive Cold War détente has ended. Terrorists, in my opinion, are people we should hunt down and kill. When I was in Iraq, I tried to do everything I could to facilitate this outcome. I am currently considering volunteering to go to Afghanistan to do it again.

When you say, as a candidate for vice president, that the opposition is lead by a man who is closely affiliated with terrorists, no intellectual jump needs to be made on the part of the listeners. What you are asserting to your base constituents, those most inclined to believe your rhetoric, is that if they don’t elect you, America’s president will be one with close, disguised ties to terrorists. But the NY Times article Palin cited in this speech could in no way be construed as stating Barack Obama has the kind of relationship with Bill Ayers Gov. Palin suggested.


To me, the issue is about professionalism. Professionalism is a word we learned a lot about in the military, in fact, it was the mark of success we sought after. A professional leader is many things- honest, well read, fit, and tactically proficient. A professional in the Marine Corps is someone for whom a standard is to be regarded as a bare minimum. A professional seeks to win at all costs, except at the cost of honor.

While a professional knows that the most effective form of leadership in challenging times is to “lead by example”, he also knows that that example alone will not be enough. He knows that the example must be taught and enforced, and that dangerous behavior or substandard performance left uncorrected is a reflection on his inability to lead and a passive condonation of mediocrity or worse.


When I happened across the aforementioned Palin rally on TV this week, I had an eerie feeling. I am loath to write this because it sounds like hyperbole, but listening to Palin denigrate her opponents and the Americans they represent- and watching the crowd's reaction- felt to me like a Klan rally.

I remarked as much to my parents, and later in the week to a fellow veteran when Palin’s comments about Obama had hit the mainstream media. But I chalked it up to a bad vibe, or a crossed synapse, the result of Palin speaking out of line, and the weight of my biases developed studying American history in college, and then confronting both overt and latent racism when I was living in the Deep South.

We had wondered if the terrorist comment was a gaffe, but one of my friends speculated that McCain himself had probably made the call to go with that line, and since we as warriors were raised to understand that responsibility rests at the top of the chain of command in any circumstance, it was a moot, but hopeful point, that he had not. But Palin didn’t backpedal. Instead, the McCain campaign released the “Ayers” attack ad in which they refined the accusation, placing only one word, a conjunction, in the middle of their associative incrimination: “Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers- friends.” The graphics for the ad form a sort of contact sheet of surveillance images.

I tuned out, to let the storm pass. I’m overreacting, I thought to myself. I have higher standards than these people do, and that’s just the way they play their game. But I wrote to another vet, “They’re making a mockery of us and our political process.”


By the time I tuned back in yesterday night, the tone hadn’t changed. In fact, it had gotten worse: the McCain campaign’s rallies this week made national headlines with their vitriol-imbibed rhetoric and unholstered crowds.

[Palin:] "And, according to the New York Times, he [Ayers] was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience. [Washington Post 6 Oct 08]

What? Kill who? Bill Ayers? Barack Obama? Palin did not respond to the comment, and continued with her speech. The Secret Service is investigating the remark.

“Our opponent voted to cut off funding for our troops,” Ms. Palin said, as she was interrupted by a deep-throated chorus of boos. “He did this even after saying that he wouldn’t do such a thing. And he said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians.’ I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women are doing in Afghanistan.”

“Treason!” one man in the crowd shouted angrily. [NY Times 7 Oct 08]

Even though a recent air raid in Afghanistan killed over 30 civilians including women and children (according to a US military investigation), and Obama accurately discussed this as a losing strategy for counterinsurgency, Palin mendaciously and unapologetically twisted it into an attack against “troops” and said nothing in response to the call of “treason”, a crime punishable by death.


Finally today, as if it were an act that merits praise, John McCain attempted to put the brakes on his bubbling, angst-ridden crowd. I watched, in shock, as a woman asking McCain a question said she “can’t trust Obama” - McCain nodded- because he was an “Arab,” she finished.

McCain began to shake his head at this, then took her mic away and told the crowd: “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not, thank you.” (Applause.)

There are two interesting things about this exchange. First, while Obama is not an ethnic Arab, if he were, would that prevent him from being a “decent family man, citizen”? Second, when McCain tells her she’s wrong, she asks, as if the teacher had just corrected her, “No?”

When your rally speakers refer to Sen. Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” and your media strategy is to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer, you reap what you sow.


Leadership is not merely about setting the example, which it would be hard to argue the McCain campaign had done in the first place. Leadership is about teaching the example and enforcing it, and raising all under your charge up to your own level of excellence.

I would say that Palin should have stopped mid-thought and told those providing the call for lynch mobs to shut their faces, but it was clear to me from her tone of voice, that she wanted her crowd to be angry and pissed off that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” and thinks all troops do is unrighteously kill civilians. If it were true, I’d be angry as well. But those are Osama Bin Laden’s positions, not Barack Obama’s.


Through this week’s events, I had an epiphany. Terrorism doesn’t scare me anymore. Terrorism is a mortal threat that I can avoid by moving to the middle of nowhere, or confront by volunteering to go back to the Middle East to hunt and kill more terrorists. What scares me much more are divisive politicians with wry smiles and an aw shucks glee playing with matches very close to the tinderbox that is America’s uncomfortable history of race relations, or our McCarthy-esque post 9/11 “who really loves America and who doesn’t” witch hunt.

This ideological battle, created only for politicians to win votes and for news channels and bloggers to sell advertising, has the potential to have a devastating effect on America by driving deeper wedges into the rifts in our society right at the time- in war, in economic hardship, in uncertainty- when we need to be united as one people.

The candidates have been preaching to us about what leadership is and which of them really has it. I know a little something about leadership too. This week has been about what leadership isn’t.


Further Reading/Viewing: Palin rally 1 (Wash Post) Palin rally 2 (NYT) Recent article about Ayers and Obama in NYT that Palin quoted Civilians killed in Afghanistan (AP) McCain tells crowd Obama is not Arab (YouTube) Palin's attack; Treason call (YouTube)