Why Do People Go To Washington?

I listened to part of McCain’s speech last night.  What I want to comment on was the recurring motif, in his and other campaign speeches, that few people go to Washington to serve the people.  This reminds me of an airplane conversation, much to the contrary, that I had with a first-term congressman.

During the summer of 1997, I was flying from Denver to SF.  The man sitting next to me commented on something I was reading, and we started talking.  He was the (now late) Walter H. Capps, then a former UCSB professor of Religious Studies and anti-war activist, who, at the age of 63, was on his way home from his first session in Congress as a Democrat representing Santa Barbara.  He died a few months after our conversation of a heart attack he had on a flight from California to Washington.  His wife has filled that seat since his death.

We had a wide-ranging conversation, part of which touched directly on this issue of why people run for office.   Capps said that the continual fund-raising necessitated by our electoral system is so burdensome and unpleasant that no one seeking personal advantage would want to stay in public office for long.  Instead, he said, many of his colleagues were in Washington because they sincerely sought to make a difference and serve the people.  If they didn’t, he claimed, they would soon move to another arena where they could more easily serve their own interests without the burdens of public office.

One more thing worth noting: he said that it was harder being a university department chair than being a member of Congress.  He said that no Congressional vote had ever kept him awake at night the way faculty personnel decisions had. 

So yes, things may have changed since 1997.  But on behalf of the Walter Capps’ in Congress and other public positions, I resent the continual repetition of the charge that people in Washington are not there to serve the people.  Some may not be, but not everyone.

Lafayette CA Iraq War Memorial

Originally uploaded by NVH.
I happened to drive past this hillside, near the Lafette BART station and visible from Hwy 24, and stopped to take cameraphone pictures. It was on the news again last night, because red bows had shown up on the crosses yesterday. They interviewed various people, including, as usual, some who saw this as disrespectful of those fighting in Iraq. It’s sad when we’re so polarized that people can see a memorial to those who have died in the fighting as disrespectful of those fighting.

One cross had on it an Islamic crescent, and several had Stars of David.

Crocodile Hunter Irwin Killed in Action

Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was killed while filming an interaction with a stingray. For those of us who’ve watched him over the years, this isn’t a surprise — I remember an episode where he went around looking at rattlesnakes in various parts of the US, and repeatedly reached into a nest to pull out a snake. Ironically, according to news reports this was a freak accident, a sting that’s rarely fatal, but the barb went into his heart.

I’m glad it wasn’t one of his beloved “crocs” that killed him.

Understanding Iraq and Afghanistan

Whatever your stand on the war in Iraq, many of us are trying to better understand that part of the world, and the current situation. I’ve read two books recently that I find illuminating, both by Rory Stewart, a Scot who has lived in Islamic countries for 10 years and worked for the British Foreign Office:

The Places in Between: Stewarts walks across Afghanistan, in the winter, alone except for a dog he picks up along the way (which saves his life at least once), taking the least-travelled (because least-accessible in winter) route, 3 months after the US invasion. I read a review that said that “If…you’re determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece. Stewart did. Stewart has.”

His stories of his encounters with people, both friendly and hostile, are fascinating. He is threatened with death many times (and shot at at least once). But he also encounters traditional Muslim hospitality, wherein travellers are put up and fed, and escort to the the next town. Several times he would not have made it across snowy passes without such local escorts. We also learn a lot about Islam, as well as about a part of Afghanistan where village headmen run things, and loyalties and rivalries are complex, embracing a long history of local conflicts as well as shifting loyalties toward the Russians, the Taliban, and the US. He asks people along the way about the times under the Taliban, and often reports the number of people lined up and killed for what seems to be no reason.

It’s part of a much longer walk — from Nepal to Turkey — and I hope he writes about the rest of it.

His second book, The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, is about his year in Iraq as an official of the Coalition Provisional Authority, beginning shortly after the invasion of Iraq. Again, his understanding of Islamic society helps us to see what is going on and how inevitably clueless the occupation forces often are.

The complexity of their task is overwhelming. He’s supposed to be starting a civilian authority in conjunction with the British military forces that have been there for several months, meaning that he has to establish his authority with both the military commanders and the locals. Early on, he is given $10 million in cash to spend in a month on rebuilding projects. (He has to give back $1.5 million that he just can’t spend.) Under Saddam, food was distributed by ration cards — and he and his colleagues have to convert this to a market economy. They try to put together a governing council of local leaders, when they don’t know the local groups and individuals and have to try to figure out who actually represents some sort of constituency, who are Iranian agents, and who is anti-Coalition.

When the local police chief is assassinated, a mullah is kidnapped, and the tribal rivalries threaten to erupt into violence, he calls the leaders of the various factions together to try to negotiate peace — working through an interpreter (he speaks Persian but not Arabic) who mis-translates him.

In both books, we learn less about Stewart than about the situations in which he finds himself. He both knows a lot about the local culture, and knows that there’s a lot that he doesn’t, cannot know. He knows that there are people he can trust, and people he cannot, and we are as mystified as he often is as to who’s who. He’s at times brave to the point of being fool-hardy, but we also see that often the only way to meet his challengers is to be tougher than they are. And we see his genuine affection for the people of both countries.