Protest Notes

Inscribed in the hearts of women and men are ideas so basic and reasonable that only a religious zealot in power or a tyrant could disagree. Building upon rational and humane ideas of liberty and love, tested by ages, we have pretended or strived to secure these promises to others as much as we hope to have them ourselves. We are told sometimes that we have been secured these rights by US soldiers, but if a member of the US Military thinks that the duty of the US Citizenry is to support him without condition, then that soldier has not thought much or well about the Constitution and people he has sworn to defend.

There are all kinds of soldiers. Numerous members of my family have served their country as US soldiers. I am the beneficiary of an inspiring intellectual relationship with a US Marine interrogator and former Georgetown professor, currently working as a writer, analyst, and advisor on US defense and international policy. Today I stood next to a few former military men in front of the Community Center in Twisp to peaceably protest the ongoing US occupation with violence. Every military man or former soldier I have ever known is a unique individual, and each has his own opinion and reasons for refusal or consent. Driving by us while we were peaceably assembled, another military man held up a starched white sailor’s cap and yelled out of his driver’s side window, “US Navy. Why don’t you all go home!”

Why didn’t we all go home, despite his authoritative tone? I stayed there with my sign because while Presidents talk about freedom, it is still just an idea in many ways, and because thinking and calmness does more for the evolution of freedom than obedience to the people waving guns and arrogance in the name of liberty. If a soldier is fighting for the purpose of universal unquestioning consent then he is fighting for no one’s freedom but his own: a trait of dictators not citizens of a struggling to be free republic.