A Sentinel in Time

By William Rivers Pitt
Created Dec 28 2006 - 10:17pm

The calendar pages of our collective history are dotted with a gloomy
constellation of days marked in blood, in woe, and in regret. The
assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy; that last, hurried helicopter flight
from that last rooftop on that last day of our time in Vietnam; the day four
lifeless little bodies were pulled from the rubble of a bombed church in
Birmingham; the December morning when Pearl Harbor was transformed into a
graveyard etched in infamy, the September morning when we all watched those
proud Towers in Manhattan crumble and fall - these moments, and the others
of like kind too vast in number to name, defined us and transformed us even
as they left their scars.

Sometimes, when such a grim milestone passes, we can say to ourselves, yes,
it was this terrible day that revealed and released the strength, courage
and perseverance which came, in time, to define that moment. We can, with
deserved pride, glory in the memory of our passage through those crucibles,
confident in the hard-won knowledge that we all have the capacity to
overcome any trial, and that surpassing good can be forged in the fires of
sorrow and pain.

Too often, however, we come to remember a day of darkness as bereft, with
empty hands and hollowed hearts, deprived of the chance or ability to do
more than bow our heads and wish it could have been, somehow, different. It
requires a long passage of time, in most instances, to allow the cold
realities of such days to sink in, and to absorb the brutal totality of
consequences we have been burdened to endure in the aftermath. Some moments
linger, haunting us, seemingly beyond redemption or solace.

Worst of all, such days breed more days to match or surpass them. The
wretched offspring of one malignant moment are birthed into our future,
where they wait like deep chasms in a darkened road. Like Booth's bullet,
they cut a swath through time itself, and no matter our efforts or
exertions, we never seem quite able to reach a place where we are free from
their damned and damnable power to do us harm.

On the twentieth day of this coming new year, we will mark the sixth
anniversary of the moment George W. Bush stood before Supreme Court Chief
Justice William Rehnquist, raised his right hand into a bitter wind, and
swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
of America.

This, in the fullness of time, may well stand as such a day. Everything we
have endured these last six years - the death, the horror, the fear, the
anger - was born that afternoon in Washington, DC. We have already suffered
myriad consequences because of it - the shame of Abu Ghraib; the lingering
fear of blue skies and airplanes; the ebb tide of freedom as rights become
privileges too easily withheld, the bottomless sorrow stitched into nearly
three thousand folded American flags while taps played to the wind - and it
is a bleak certainty that further suffering born on that day lies in wait.

Consider some other anniversaries we will mark in this new year.

February 5th will be the fourth anniversary of Colin Powell's presentation
before the United Nations, in which he stated without equivocation that
Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
that could easily be delivered to terrorists for use against us. The
invasion and occupation of Iraq, and all the bloody calamities to follow,
became an inevitability on this day. It was not so much the presentation
itself that sealed the deal - much of which was and remains laughably
transparent - but Powell himself. Wreathed in the fawning adulation of the
media establishment, the myth of his rectitude carried the day, thus damning
untold thousands to death, suffering, and pain.

March 19th will likewise be the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq,
of "Shock and Awe," and of the moment a match was put to the fuse. Beyond
the blood already spilled because of this day - blood like an ocean - is the
carnage yet to come. Before much of this new year is gone, the only people
still talking about "winning" in Iraq will be that small cadre of wretches
who created this anniversary in the first place, whose monochromatic
ideologies exploded an inescapable quagmire that will be generational in its
impact upon us all.

May 1st will be the fourth anniversary of the day President Bush stood
before an assembled gathering of servicemen and women on the deck of the
aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to gleefully declare, under a bright banner
reading "Mission Accomplished," that victory in Iraq had been achieved.
Little needs to be said here, because the obvious grossness of some moments
requires no further elaboration, except this: Of the nearly three thousand
soldiers killed in Iraq, and the nearly 47,000 soldiers wounded in Iraq,
only the barest fraction fell before the first of May 2003. All the rest
have come in the long days, weeks, months, and years since that bright
banner was unfurled.

December 17th will be the second anniversary of Bush's public confirmation
that he had indeed authorized the National Security Agency to tap the
telephones of countless American citizens - said taps having been undertaken
without warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, a law
requiring these warrants to protect citizens against undue governmental
intrusion, was discarded out of hand through these actions. Despite the fact
that almost no requests for FISA warrants have ever been denied, and that
the parameters for obtaining these warrants are so broad that they can be
obtained even after the surveillance is underway, Bush and his people deemed
the FISA requirements too restrictive. On this anniversary, we mark the
moment when a president placed himself above the law by fiat and suffered no
consequences - the moment when each and every one of us stepped deeper into
the doomed, imprisoned shadow of Winston Smith.

These are but a small sampling of the moments, days, decisions, and
consequences unleashed on January 20, 2001. Freighted with deadly potential,
each of these was born that day, and each has itself become a singularity, a
creator of mayhem and strife in its own right. As that first moment poisoned
the potential of so many tomorrows, so now do these. The bomb that kills a
child in Baghdad creates the father whose revenge will be gained by
another's senseless death. The official lie that goes unchallenged clears a
path for the deadlier lies to follow. A deliberate chip in the walls
defending our rights is the perfect spot to lay in the pry bar, until the
chip becomes a hole through which tyranny may pass with stunning ease.

Thus, the anniversaries of woe are compounded; consequences spawned by
consequences, and a future once defined by hope is transformed into a
territory of dread.

Yet, in spite of all the horrors arrayed before us, even as our uncertain
future whispers its omens of grief from an unfathomable darkness, there is a
simple and unassailable truth standing sentinel against despair. We are that
truth - all of us, every one. We are a defiant counterweight that can tip
the scales of history. The wellspring of limitless possibility and potential
that is humanity's astonishing birthright bestows upon each of us the means
to be the alchemists of our own fate.

You are the bulwark, as this new year approaches: a defining line between
the possible and the inevitable. The terrible moments of our past reach out
to define our future, to create new anniversaries of mourning from the old.
Only your will can keep this beast at bay. If you choose to, if you summon
the courage and strength and perseverance that have served us well so many
times before, the momentum of that cold January day and all the days that
followed will be checked.

You are stronger than history, if you choose to be so. The future is yours
to create, if you choose to do so. The moments to come are yours. Let
nothing and no one steal them from you. Guard them with your life, because
that is exactly what they are.
_______

About author William Rivers Pitt [0] is a New York Times and internationally
bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want
You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of
Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will
be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson