President Obama has taken a further plunge into the kind of war abyss
that consumed predecessors named Johnson, Nixon and Bush.
On Sunday, during his first presidential trip to Afghanistan, Obama
stood before thousands of American troops to proclaim the sanctity of
the war effort. He played the role deftly -- a commander in chief,
rallying the troops -- while wearing a bomber jacket.
There was something candidly macabre about the decision to wear
that leather jacket, adorned with an American Eagle and the words "Air
Force One." The man in the bomber jacket doesn't press the buttons that
fire the missiles and drop the warheads, but he gives the orders that
make it all possible.
One way or another, we're used to seeing presidents display such
tacit accouterments of carnage.
And the president's words were also eerily familiar: with their
cadence and confidence in the efficacy of mass violence, when provided
by the Pentagon and meted out by a military so technologically supreme
that dissociation can masquerade as ultimate erudition -- so powerful
and so sophisticated that orders stay light years away from human
consequences.
The war becomes its own rationale for continuing: to go on because
it must go on.
A grisly counterpoint to Obama's brief Afghanistan visit is a day
in 1966 when another president, in the midst of escalating another war,
also took a long ride on Air Force One to laud and boost the troops.
In South Vietnam, at Cam Ranh Bay, President Johnson told the
American soldiers: "Be sure to come home with that coonskin on the
wall."
Then, too, thousands of soldiers responded to the president's
exhortations by whooping it up. And then, too, the media coverage was
upbeat.
In a cover story, Life quoted a corporal who called Johnson's visit
the "best morale booster Cam Ranh's ever had."
The magazine piece, written by an eminent journalist of the era,
Shana Alexander, went on: "Certainly the corporal was right and so was
[White House press secretary Bill] Moyers when he later compared the day
to a sermon, in that so much of the real meaning is not in what the
preacher says but in what his listeners hear."
The article concluded that it had been a "wild and quite wonderful
day."
Fast forward 44 years.
"There's going to be setbacks," President Obama told the troops at
Bagram Air Base. "We face a determined enemy. But we also know this: The
United States of America does not quit once it starts on something."
The applause line lingered as the next words directly addressed the
clapping troops: "You don't quit, the American armed services does not
quit, we keep at it, we persevere, and together with our partners we
will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that."
The president added: "And we'll be there for you when you come
home. It's why we're improving care for our wounded warriors, especially
those with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. We're moving forward with
the post-9/11 GI Bill so you and your families can pursue your dreams."
Those words provide a kind of freeze frame for basic convolution:
The government will help veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries
to pursue their dreams.
In the realm of careful abstraction, where actual people are
rendered invisible, best not to acknowledge how much better it would be
if those veterans could pursue their dreams without suffering from PTSD
and traumatic brain injuries in the first place.
But such human realities are for private suffering, not public
discourse.
The next morning, the front page of the New York Times reported
that the president's visit to Afghanistan "included a boisterous pep
rally with American troops."
