The president’s eyes twinkle and taunt, occasionally hold back and turn chilly. I want to see pain there. He is the leader of this country and our soldiers are dying in a war he said we needed to fight. Iraqis are dying, too–some of them civilians caught in the crossfire. I don’t understand how he can remain so composed.
I’ve also been watching how Bush walks–still that jaunty stride, I’m afraid. Nothing to indicate that his bones have the leaden feel that bones always do when grief intrudes.
His words suggest he feels sorrow over the toll this war is taking. Yet, in his televised press conference when he said that witnessing the death toll of our young soldiers is “gut-wrenching,” I winced. He sounded as if he were practicing the words for an elocution lesson–clipped syllables and precise consonants.
With so much attention focused on photographs recently–the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers; John Kerry and other Vietnam War veterans tossing away their ribbons and medals in an antiwar protest 33 years ago; images of Princess Diana dying–a photo published long ago came to mind. It was of President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. He was listening to a tape sent by Captain Charles Robb from Vietnam. You can’t see Johnson’s face; he is bent over, his head is lowered into one hand. It is the picture of a man weighed down by the sorrow and turmoil of the times, of the awesome responsibility he had inherited.
In those years, demonstrators were often outside the White House chanting things like, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many boys did you kill today?” Years ago, when I did an article on former First Ladies, Mrs. Johnson told me they could hear the chants and occasional epithets from inside the walls of the White House and her husband’s heart was torn to pieces. Whatever you think of Johnson’s presidency or of his handling of the Vietnam War, you can’t look at a picture of him and not see suffering in his eyes or the weight of those sad times settling heavily on his shoulders.
Our country’s current leader said he needed to lead us into war. He said it was necessary, vital, and, as in any war, that some would come home wounded–and some would not come home at all (actually he didn’t really say the last part of that, but he should have.) Isn’t it then his responsibility to also lead us through the grief–with visible sorrow and compassionate strength? President Bush obviously has adept speech writers, but how can we be comforted by slogans? By rhetoric that can only be categorized as “fighting words”? By phrases that sound like they came from bumper-stickers?
How can we heal if we can’t look at the leader of our country and see our own immense sorrow mirrored in his eyes? And if that leader tells us the toll of this war is, to him, “gut-wrenching”, shouldn’t that sound as if it’s coming from his gut?
