Notes on a visit to Washington, D.C.:
At the north end of the National Mall stand the buildings intended to house the formation of our nation's laws. The Capitol in their center is laced with scaffolding, suggesting also the need for repair, even reconstruction, to the institutions housed at each end. The Senate, limited by a self-imposed requirement of a 60 percent vote to pass legislation, could benefit from a reread of the constitution. The House, crippled by politics apparently authorizing a veto exercised by less than 20 percent of the chamber, needs a psychiatrist more than a speaker.
Strolling down the Mall, the White House emerges on the right just before the climb up the hill, passing the Washington Monument spire celebrating the man who could have been king but who instead laid the foundation for executive democracy. The occupant of the White House, the elected president of the United States, is now pushed to test the limits of executive power by the paralysis of the legislative bodies.
Approaching the other end of the Mall, the stroller comes upon the memorials to our recent wars starting with the Second World War. That monument, like the Memorial to the First World War in front of the Capitol, is a forum celebrating triumphs in battle.
These wars were all declared by the people's representatives while sitting at the Capitol end of the Mall. The price for these wars was paid by the tens of thousands memorialized as the visitor passes the Second World War Memorial moving farther toward the end, a round pond and quadrangular reflecting pool cupped by the Potomac River.
Though recently prettied up with juniper and marble surroundings, the haunting platoon of American GIs on patrol in the Korean "Police Action" captures best for this observer the nature of the wars, the mortal fear, the guts, the deprivation and the close combat to which we commit our young men. This war, bringing with it a broad coalition of international partners, excepting the USSR, was also declared by Congress.
Next in approach, the Vietnam Memorial, as a slide to a grave, records its portion of the thousands of dead that come with wars. Though this war was declared by Congress, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that triggered the action was, essentially, fraudulently conceived, with President Lyndon B. Johnson, otherwise a president of great achievements, the deceiver. Alaska's Sen. Ernest Gruening, together with Oregon's Sen. Wayne Morse, cast the only votes against this war, in retrospect of profoundly questionable necessity. They paid for it only with their seats, unlike the thousands who lost their lives, more than doubled by President Richard Nixon after promising an end to it.
A memorial for the First Iraq War, a justifiable reversal of an invasion of neighboring Kuwait by Iraq, sponsored by the first President Bush but supported by the world community, and a memorial for human losses in the nouveau–imperialist invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, entered on the deceptions of Bush Two, are yet to be built.
Slightly beyond them, the visitor reads, among the sculptures, engravings citing the passionate and surprisingly common beliefs of great American leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. In eloquent phrases, these giants shame, by implication, the failures of the government at the mall's north end for its current muddle. They all speak first to the value of peace, the importance of expanded international communion and the principle that violence is, absolutely, the last resort. The greater shame lies with Johnson, Nixon and Bush Two, who didn't observe these inscriptions. Several of the bellicose candidates for president in the current round would do well to frequent these grounds.
Carved on these marbles also are messages embracing the importance of hope, of the need for adaptation to suit the exigencies of new times, new technologies and new social dynamics.
While these messages resonate strongly in the context of the nation's capital, they are relevant to faraway Alaskans also. Our Legislature, too, can shape its purposes away from divisive politics and more to the urgent business at hand. We the people of Alaska can also curb our preferences for violence and find peace in policies and behavior that respect our commonwealth.
John Havelock is visiting Washington, including a visit with the president, as a part of the celebration of the founding of the White House Fellows program 50 years ago. He is a former White House Fellow and former Alaska attorney general. He lives in Anchorage.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com