Psyche, Science, and Society

The tragedy of death, death on one individual, and of democracy

May 24th, 2007

Every death is a tragedy. But, as we become overwhelmed with the massive death unleashed by war, deaths gradually turn into statistics, as Stalin so cynically noted. This process is stopped for a bit when one has a personal connection, even a minimal one, to a death. Thus, the news last week that Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich died in Iraq came as a shock to many of us in the Boston area. I had met and heard his father, retired Colonel and Boston University Professor Andrew J. Bacevich, speak to our local peace group, Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice. Other people I know well were friends with the younger Bacevich. Even at the distance that I am from this death, one of the hundreds of thousands accompanying this illegal, destructive, and lost war, I feel a sense of emptiness in contemplating it.

Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com expresses some of these feelings well as he discusses the fathers despair at the death of his son, and the slowly-evolving death of American democracy: ‘What Kind of Democracy Is This?’ A grieving father wants to know. As Raimondo puts it:

He was, by all accounts, anything but a tragic figure, full of the life-force and an inspiration and joy to those who knew him. Yet this very quality underscores the tragedy of his demise and inevitably leads us to raise the questions his father, Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam and now teaches at Boston University, asked in an interview with National Public Radio: “One of the things that I’ve been really struggling with over the last several days is to try to understand my responsibility for my own son’s death.”

Bacevich, a prominent conservative critic of the war who has deemed the invasion “a catastrophic failure,” thought his responsibility was to voice his opposition to the war, but, he asks:

“What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?”

It is a question that needs to be addressed to the leadership of both parties, not only the Republicans – particularly Mitt “Two, Three, Many Guantanamos” Romney – but also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. These two Democratic Party bigwigs were propelled into power by rising antiwar sentiment, yet they have just signed on to a war funding bill with no timelines, no preconditions, and no real congressional oversight. It’s just another blank check – drawn on an account long since drained dry.

The senior Bacevich’s question is more than a father’s lament for his son: it is a eulogy spoken over the remains of our old Republic.

Entry Filed under: Bush administration, Congress, Iraq, Politics, US Troops, War and Peace