We the Wolves
We the Republicans, Democrats, progressives, conservatives, and independents need to get a grip on reality — and fast.
The suicide bombing that killed 13 American service men and women and more than 100 Afghans at the Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26, 2021 is a real tragedy. For this, I offer my condolences to the families, friends, troop members, educators, faith leaders, and coaches that produced these young men and women for service to our country. I offer the same condolences to Afghan and NATO allies killed in America’s longest war.[1]
So why must our elected officials in Washington make political sport of this act of terror?
The Republicans’ demand to file articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden is one example. This is not to preclude impeachment as an option. But it should not become a distraction from important foreign affairs at hand, or eclipse the socioeconomic well being of millions of people living on main street America. This is particularly so if some Republicans’ real goal for impeachment is payback for the Democrats’ impeachment show of President Donald Trump, or worse, the GOP’s loss of the White House in 2020. If either is true, congressional gridlock is guaranteed.
The Democrats’ desire to blame everything for Kabul on the previous administration is another example. Naturally, we should walk through President Trump and his military advisors’ decision-making matrix for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and their negotiations with the Taliban, to identify causal links to the current predicament. But this is not what some Democrats are doing. If their goal is to avoid giving equal treatment to President Biden and his military advisors’ decision-making matrix for withdrawal from Afghanistan to overshadow his culpability in the Kabul tragedy and its aftermath; or worse, to prolong broaching a conversation among members of the Biden cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment for reasons not necessarily related to Kabul, but exposed by it nonetheless, then a national crisis in confidence is guaranteed.
Neither party is blameless.
Although the seeds of blame for Afghanistan were planted decades ago, fertilized by seven presidential administrations, they are blossoming in a monumentally dangerous season in American life at home.
With “We the People” holding Capitol Hill and this administration (and the last one) in low esteem, our general unhappiness with the way things are going domestically, our distrust in the media and social institutions growing, our culture wars escalating in nuanced ways, and the health of our young people ages 17 to 24 compromising our military preparedness — as our national sense of purpose 20 years after the collapse of the World Trade Centers is in question — we are approaching dire straits.
But “We the People” are not innocent bystanders. Fighting each other like fools before an international audience about which party, president, or geographical region is a real enemy of American freedom at home and abroad.
We are not the enemy. Political opponents we are. Enemies we are not.
All the while, our real self-proclaimed enemies (new and old) patiently watch us eat each other on television and social media every week. More strategically, they watch to see which wolf we feed.
What do I mean?
A poem attributed to an old Cherokee Indian chief teaching his grandson a lesson about life, and a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Holmes on April 22, 1820, offer insights for such a time as this.
The poem:
“A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a fight between two wolves. One is evil, full of anger, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity and false pride. The other is good, full of joy, peace, love, humility, kindness and faith,” he said. “This same fight is going on inside of you, grandson…and inside of every other person on the face of this earth.” The grandson ponders this for a moment and then asks, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The old man smiled and simply said, “The one you feed.”
The letter:
“A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated….[B]ut as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
The “wolf” in the poem is human nature and its travails with good and evil. The “wolf” in Jefferson’s letter is American slavery, and the “geographical line” refers to the controversy surrounding the passage of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and its influence on the passions of angry men on inter- and intra-party division in national and state politics.
Well, 201 years later, we are fighting wolves internal and external — metaphorically and literally — holding the ear of another wolf, as the angry passions of men and women in Washington are fueling inter- and intra-party division in state and national politics as they draw ideological lines of demarcation in Washington and Kabul.
We cannot afford for our elected leaders to play partisan patty-cake with each other and with us — constitutionally and existentially — especially when our self-proclaimed enemies remain united in their passion to bring death to America through words and actions. Boldly doing each without any pretense of acting like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Our enemies know they are wolves.
Do we?
The way I see the future, war is certain. For national security and self-preservation, certainly, and other reasons too. We have done it before. Now is the time for us to learn from the diplomatic, agency-level, and legal successes, losses, and missed opportunities from this 20-year campaign. The rationale for doing so is neither to promote war nor to declare peace unattainable. It is to prepare us for the world we live in now as the world we want to live in is assembling.
How will history judge us for thinking this way?
As a warmonger rather than a peacekeeper?
Maybe both.
How will the American generation born since September 11, 2001 — approximately one out of every four people in the U.S. — and their descendants judge us for this way of thinking?
As a hawk rather than a dove?
Maybe neither.
The answers to each of these questions will depend on the poems we tell those generations about how their ancestors’ individual choices, collective partnerships, and faithful sacrifices played out (or not) after the Afghanistan ground war came to a close during a season in American life when the Great Sorrow awakened from hibernation — and “We the People” had to choose a wolf to feed.
[1] My condolences also extend to families, friends, and others living with the human costs associated with this war: the more than 2,400 dead U.S. soldiers and 3,800 dead U.S. contractors; and more than 66,000 dead Afghan national military and police members, and 47,000 dead Afghan men, women, and children. I also offer thanks to our military personnel and contractors, their families, friends, and others who returned home after a tour(s) in Afghanistan. Some are well, others are prosperous. Some are sick, others committed suicide.
