Another Moment to Remember

Just so you won’t be sitting around thinking, “isn’t it great that there haven’t been any new incidents with Iris’ mom”, last night she fell out of bed and last week she fell two or three times—we’ve stopped counting. Other than a few new black and blue marks, she’s just fine. She’s up and around and participating in activities and frustrated by the silly falls, but as she says, “go know”. Have I explained the concept of “go know”. It is best used when you are surprised by something like a fall and you can’t explain exactly why it happened but you shrug your shoulders and instead of saying “who would have guessed”, you say “go know”. It’s not exactly a shortcut and you do have to say it with precisely the right intonation, but it works when used appropriately and if you’re an 86 year old Jewish woman who doesn’t understand why she falls because there is really no explanation... blah blah blah.

I went out to visit her on Tuesday and to pick up the car because I was going back to Virginia on Wednesday. When I got there, the residents were watching a DVD of George Burns’ 100th birthday. I thought we’d spend some quality time together (whatever that means) but she wanted to watch the show, so I watched it with her. It was incredibly entertaining and in some ways very poignant to be watching it with people who were almost 100. People who are facing their own mortality every day... falling is only one of the many reminders. The activities director did say that they love my mom. They think she is kind, sweet, cute and oh so friendly. She helps anyone who needs it and never has an unkind word. I guess she has mellowed over the years. She sent David $25 for Father’s day and he has been walking around talking about how cute she is... I guess he has mellowed as well.

So where were we. Oh yes, The President. We were watching the news conference this morning and I was gagging until Helen, who never asks a question anymore but just puts it to him, said, “thousands of people have died in Iraq. Don’t you think it’s enough?” and he didn’t answer her because he doesn’t think it’s enough. But everytime he says things like, “We have to defend the Iraqi government.” or “We cannot leave at this crucial time.” Or “the Congress should not interfere.” I wonder why someone in the press doesn’t just say.. .”Why?”. I am certain he cannot answer a “Why” question.

And don’t you think it’s interesting that McCain’s campaign director and strategist resigned. Here’s what I don’t get. There are two elected officials who continue to defend the war—Leiberman and McCain. The only thing I an figure is that it must be about business. Are there contractors in Conn. or Arizona who are making a fortune on war related enterprises? What else could inspire these two presumably intelligent people to continue to say “everything is fine” when we know that is not the case. I watched McCain’s speech to the Senate a few days ago and I could not believe the crap spewing from his mouth. First of all, no elected official visiting a war zone has any real sense of what is going on because they are so insulated, it would be impossible to see the truth. But then there is the macho factor, which means that it is impossible to admit a mistake so you continue to defend the error until you can deny that there was ever a problem. This Administration is excellent at denial and even better at moving on without explanation. Here’s what I think will happen. The President will decide to bring the troops home, in a slow but steady withdrawl, and they will blame the Iraqi government for their ineptitude and failure. They will never take responsibility for creating a dangerous and volatile situation in the war zone. They will never admit to creating rather than eliminating an increase in terrorism around the world. They will never say, “We so screwed up international relations that now we don’t know what to do.” Jordan says we should just make Bill Clinton ‘dictator for a day’ and let him fix it. But that’s not going to happen.

Congress needs to be involved and vocal about our international foibles. People elected them to be our voice, our representatives. We want them to be involved. Painful as it is to admit that this was parallels Viet Nam, in oh too many ways. But I am not sure that the Iraqi’s or any ‘terrorist’ organization will ever aspire to be like us economically or technologically, Oh my, what are we going to do about so much hate. Fanatics are fanatics no matter the continent or religion. In a world that knows no kindness, no compassion, what will our children have to deal with? Why do people do such terrible things to other people? Too many questions. There are terrorists, there are economic and religion issues. There are stupid people. “Go Know”. We’re just sayin....Iris