Days of infamy, decorated service and what next…
On days of infamy and the fallacy of decorations. Yeah, it’s long. Because there’s a lot going on right now.
For my parents and grandparents, THE day of infamy was December 7, 1941. For me and my only child, first came September 11, 2001, and now we’ve added January 6, 2021 to our portfolio. Those who voted for the first time in 2020 are too young to remember 9/11. Now they have their own marker of a time when they will always remember where they were and what they were doing when they learned what was happening.
On 9/11, I was home on a scheduled day off and had just finished walking the dog when my wife called from work and told me to turn on the TV. Because I grew up mostly in central NJ in the 60s and 70s, and because my professional career regularly took me to the Pentagon, and because I knew people that were present at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon on 9/11, those attacks became very personal. The World Trade Center literally went up before my eyes when I was kid, which amplified the horror when the towers came down. Once the addresses of the dead became known, this was intensified. Many were from places near where I grew up or where I‘ve ’lived in the Baltimore-Washington corridor since 1987. My anger and grief were intense for months. Over time, I was able to visit each of the WTC site, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA, and process my grief into something that did not manifest itself as daily pain.
January 6, 2021 wasn’t that much different than many days in the preceding nine months. I retired over the summer, but long-made plans for travel and volunteer work were on hold as my wife and I tried to lay low, avoid COVID, and wait for our turn to get vaccinated. I made a conscious effort early in this process to limit my daytime consumption of cable news (I made no such attempt to limit doomscrolling through Twitter though). The arrival of cooler weather in December pushed daily dog walks to later in the day, leaving me with opportunities to stray into news watching in the morning. On Wednesday, January 6th, we woke to the news that the special election in Georgia for its two Georgia senate seats had flipped blue, giving the Democratic party the majority in the senate (once Vice President-elect Harris was factored in as the tiebreaker). This was aligned with my pattern of voting since 2008. I abandoned all pretext of moderation of news consumption and turned to television to bask in the punditry about the results in both the “mainstream” and conservative cable outlets.
Donald Trump’s perfidy would make a that short lived proposition. In the run-up to the joint session of Congress certifying the electoral votes at 1pm, I turned to the appetizer, Trump’s remarks to his adoring audience at the March to Save America, with the main stage dramatically positioned to frame the White House in the background. Before Trump, there were opening acts. Among the shrillest: Amy Kremer, leader of Women for America First. Eric Trump. John Eastman. Donald Trump Junior. Rudy Giuliani, who advised the crowd that there would be “trial by combat”. And the main act, Donald Trump himself, who invited the crown to March to capitol, to make their feelings known, and while providing assurance that he would be with them. Sure, Jan.
During the part of a winter afternoon when I would normally be walking the dog, instead I was treated to the unlikeliest of sights: the capitol being overrun by a crowd of mostly white people carrying flags. US flags. Colonial flags. Gadsden flags. Confederate flags. And oh so many varieties of Trump flags. They were mad about lies told over and over again by Donald Trump about the 2020 election results.
I immediately recalled the time in late spring, when National Guardsmen in body armor were in formation at the Lincoln Memorial, and when BLM protesters at Lafayette Square were aggressively cleared with tear gas, rubber bullets and helicopters by phalanxes of federal LEOs in body armor so that Donald Trump could have a photo op in front of a church with a bible. Surely similar resources would be turned out against the people that would do harm to the capitol and its occupants.
There was, of course, no similar resolution. The images that emerged over the next 48 hours were horrific. Dudes in tactical gear on in the House chamber with flexicuffs (who were those for?). Some United States Capitol Police (USCP) officers seeming to step aside in the halls, possibly in response to “ACAB” chants…or maybe because they were aligned with the views of the criminals in the building. I was in the navy, and recognize sideboys rendering honors when I see them. At least one Capitol police officer posed for a selfie. Then there was the guy in Pelosi’s office. And the guy in the rotunda carrying a lectern. The guy wearing a furry horned helmet and face paint. The guy on the speaker’s dais. Happily, we were spared views of the ones who decided that urination and defecation in the capitol were their form of expression.
Other manifestations of the USCP told a different story, the story we expect when we think of the highest ideals of law enforcement. One was being crushed against a wall as a terrorist pulled at his gas mask as he tried to keep his post. One was the last good guy with a gun between a member of congress and a woman named Ashli Babbitt (more on her below). When she tried to become the first one through a just-broken window leading to the corridor where that lawmaker had just fled, that USCP officer fired a fatal round through her upper center of mass. In another part of the building, USCP officer Brian Sicknick received a blow to his head from a fire extinguisher. He would die from that blow before the calendar turned to January 7th.
When the building was finally cleared, and Congress and Pence went back to work, they did so in the wake of five dead people. Three of these died from “medical emergencies” while engaging in their mayhem. All were from out of town. Brian Sicknick was dead after being assaulted by a crowd that fetishizes flags, including the Thin Blue Line Flag.
And then there’s Ashli Babbitt, or as she was frequently described (especially by conservative outlets): “decorated Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt”. Let’s be clear about this characterization. Yes, Ashli Bennett served honorably. But while administratively honorable, her service was not remarkable. Four years of active Air Force service and eight more years of affiliation with the Air Force reserve and Air National Guard. With all that service time, she attained the rank of Senior Airman (E-4). She received an Army Achievement Medal (presumably for duties in a joint USAF-Army environment at some point). The remainder of her decorations were service awards. While they hold meaning, they are also the same awards that everybody receives for going where they are supposed to when told to go. While her service may have been perfectly honorable, she was not setting any of the Air Force, the reserves or the National Guard on fire with her professional growth.
Ashli Babbitt’s social media presence in recent years showed support for Q-anon conspiracies, participation in Trump boat parades, conservative vetbro-style rants while driving, and retweets of Lin Wood (who evolved over the years from attorney to Richard Jewell to right-wing goofball). If we were describing a disciple of Al Qaeda, we would call this radicalization, and that’s exactly what this was.
In the final days and hours of her life, Ashli Babbitt expressed excitement about the adventure she was undertaking as she traveled from her San Diego to Washington DC. I wonder if during the brief moments between the bullet striking her and her last breath, if decorated Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt reflected on the series of bad decisions that led her death on the floor of the capitol…or did she die doing what she loved? Or perhaps she passed from this life like so many others, wanting to be close to those closest to her. Instead she was surrounded by strangers. Here’s the thing: just like with Oliver North and Michael Flynn and John Poindexter (just to name a few), neither her military decorations nor her DD214 provided inoculations against criminal choices and bad decisions. We should focus less on her past military affiliation, and more on the context of how she lost her life.
We are still unraveling the events of January 6th. There’s the unmitigated failure of physical security at the capitol. Had the USCP and Secret Service members who succeeded at protecting lawmakers and the Vice President failed, we could still be in a hostage (or worse) situation. Was this an intelligence failure? A leadership failure? Did the terrorist elements have inside help? How culpable are the mid-day speakers, and the members of congress who fueled the desire to “contest” the electoral college results in the absence of ANY evidence of voter fraud? And what about the mewling of Fox News, who resorted to whatabout-ism and begged our indulgence for the 75 million voters whose candidate lost? I’m trying to remember the Fox News concern for the majority of voters who did not get their candidate seated after the 2016 election…but can’t. What I do recall is that this was about the time when Fox News (and especially its weeknight prime-time crew) became the original franchisee of the conservative “fuck your feelings” movement.
For me, January 6th was MORE painful than 9/11. 9/11 arrived from the terrorist training grounds in southwest Asia. It was in our sights for years, and executed by those who did not share our language, our customs, our currency. We understood afterwards we’d have to take the fight to them with our armed forces. January 6th was a home grown malignancy. It’s perpetrators were, quite literally, our neighbors. It included members of state legislatures. The Louisiana Attorney General is a member of an organization that encouraged its members to travel to Washington DC via robocalls. I received a robocall in my own house (from a spoofed caller ID) inviting my presence there. Active members of law enforcement agencies were present on the National Mall, and possibly as part of the criminal element within the capitol. That they were exhorted by a sitting US president and his confederates, and that they went in flying flags with HIS name on it sickens me. I hope their expressed love of law and order is sustained when the DoJ goes hard after them in the weeks, months and years to come.
There were no easy options for the final 11 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. Who knew it would close on a page that was more dramatic (if less deadly) than his failure to marshal the vast resources of the federal government in response to COVID-19? The GOP is not served by Lindsey Graham going on Hannity and asking Nancy Pelosi to intervene in impeachment proceedings. Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or Mark McCarthy or Ted Cruz or whoever else may have the ear of Trump needed to do for him in the early days of 2021 what Rhodes, Goldwater and Scott did for Nixon in the summer of 1974: meet him face to face, tell him there’s a bipartisan determination of “game over”, and have him leave the building. Donald Trump brok a lot of our stuff, and we have years of cleanup in front of us to undo the damage.
