Dear Mr. President Read online

  “Hey, G.D. Hey, Zen Master. If you’re looking for love, I’m your man. Come and get me.”

  I opened my eyes, blinked, and strolled over to the far end of the bunker, and, with my e-tool, banged on the wood slats of Dithers’s cage very hard. The chimps erupted into a chorus of screeches and started shaking the slats of their cages, which pretty much sealed the deal for me: getting my head up into the void was obviously out of the question now. So, choosing to ignore Dithers’s laughter, I ambled down the hall and flung back the hatch and hoisted myself out of the bunker. I went for a walk in the cool desert night, where I mentally reprimanded myself for letting Dithers get the best of me.

  But I should explain: I am not by nature a violent man, not anymore anyway. I believe in the sanctity of all people. And now my only allegiance is to Life, that golden kaleidoscope which turns always in circles, riddled as it is with its patchworked bits of magic and mystery and beauty. Here in my underground bunker, which is where I am writing this from, and which was abandoned by Iraqi soldiers well before I ever arrived on the scene, I salute Life every day to the fullest, and beyond the steel hatch of the bunker and moving fifty yards south, lies Highway 8, which is the main road that runs from Basra to Baghdad. And it is on this highway that the starving, the depraved, the war-weary Iraqi civilians, mothers carrying their dead babies, one-legged orphans, whole caravans of families with shattered faces from witnessing the catastrophic demolition of their homes and villages, the fleeing Iraqi soldiers, not the demonic Republican Guard but the scared boys and old men forced into service by their vicious dictator, where hundreds of charred tanks and scorched cars line the highway and the ditches alongside the highway, still even tongues of flame reach out to lick the sky, and the noxious odor of burning human flesh chokes the air—like some kind of permanent backyard barbecue smell—this apocalyptic highway, are making their pilgrimage on foot to the supposed safety of Baghdad, where they’ll probably be blocked from the city’s gates anyway.

  Now some people might call me a criminal, a traitor, or worse even, because I deserted my Green Beret brothers and my country, but they are fools, because I know now that the heart is the highest law there is. And I find that if I turn an ear inward and pay very close attention, then my heart speaks to me louder and louder each day.

  So there I was, strolling along that night and chewing myself out for the Dithers thing, when I stumbled upon a kindly old Iraqi woman crawling in the ditch along the highway. This was my first patient of the night and my heart quickened. I slid my ruck off and dug out my medical kit. I got down on my knees and set this woman’s mangled leg in a splint. She started to speak, but I gestured shhhh. I cleaned the infected area on her calf and picked maggots out with tweezers. I rubbed the wound down with salve, which I knew must have burned. And it was then, as I was cleaning her leg and I saw the hot tears of gratitude in her eyes, it was then that I found the peace of mind that had eluded me back in the bunker.

  HUNTING FOR SCUDS, AND HOW I HELPED PREVENT A NUCLEAR WAR

  It doesn’t matter who you are, at some point something will happen to you out of the blue and your life will instantly be changed dramatically and forever. There is the crackle of lightning, the clouds part, and you see a muscular arm reach down and the Big Guy in the Sky deals you The Card. Well, I got The Joker. And it’s funny, because once you realize the joke’s on you, the last thing you want to do is laugh. And so it was for me, though even looking back on it all now there still doesn’t seem to have been any sign of what that night had in store. This is how it started: Our team was on patrol up near Al Haqlaniya, right along the banks of the Euphrates River. I was behind the wheel of the Rover, and Marty was scoping the landscape with his thermal sight. Our mission was to hunt and destroy SCUDs deep inside Iraq, and let me tell you, a SCUD is almost as dangerous as a BB gun, and definitely less accurate. They have no guidance system, and so the Iraqis just point them in a general direction and presto: off goes a deadly SCUD. Of course, our gazillion-dollar Patriots, courtesy of that genius Reagan, are just as ridiculous, because when a SCUD starts to drop it shatters into a thousand little parts of scrap metal, and when we fire a Patriot it just locks in on one of those little pieces, and those jerkoffs claim they shot down a SCUD. CNN runs the story, then everyone back home waves their flag, and the whole thing starts to remind you of a professional wrestling match.

  “Hey,” said Marty, “what’s up with this shit detail?”

  “You’re stopping a nuclear war,” said Dithers, “so quit your bitching. You’re going to be able to tell your grandchildren about this.”

  That was our little joke. The thing about the nuclear war. Over a month ago now, January 14, some dozen SCUDs smashed into Tel Aviv and Haifa. Next thing you know Israeli prime minister Shamir aims mobile missiles armed with nuclear warheads at Iraq. The Saudis stated in no uncertain terms that if Israel got involved in Desert Storm, then they’d yank their ally status. Bush convinced Shamir to hold off starting a nuclear war by sending his best men, Green Beret, behind Iraqi lines for the sole purpose of SCUD busting.

  “Yo,” said Marty, pointing. “What’s that? I think those might be SCUDs.”

  We turned and saw a stoic shepherd surrounded by teeming sheep. The shepherd angrily waved his cane at us. He was Bedouin, and these guys hated us. They were the black magic gypsies of the desert.

  Everyone started whooping back at the shepherd. “Yeah,” said Dithers, “those are some deadly-looking SCUDs. We’d better call it in.”

  Cynicism was at an all-time high. We’d been inserted by Pave Lows three weeks ago, and other than a couple skirmishes with some weak-ass Iraqi soldiers, there had been no real action to speak of. And no SCUDs. Every couple days an MH-60 Black-hawk would shoot out to deliver fuel supplies and drop off our mail. It was freezing up there, with these wicked sandstorms, shamals, I think they’re called, and we’d cruise all night in our Rover, and then hide out and catch some Z’s during the day.

  I jerked the wheel and said, “Hold on, gents.” I started cutting sharp circles around the sheep. They panicked, bleating, scrambling every which way, some tumbling on their faces and others trampling them. The next thing I know, I hear a rifle shot, and Marty says, “Damn.” I look over and there’s a blotch of blood on Marty’s shoulder. But there was no time, another shot, and our right front tire exploded, and in a blur I wrestled with the wheel as the Rover swerved and rolled up on its side. I tumbled out and aimed my Beretta at the shepherd, who was sighting in on us with a rifle. Then, and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen, seven or eight of the sheep stand up on their hind legs and cast off their wool coats, and I see that underneath are Iraqi soldiers brandishing AK-47s. A volley of machine-gun fire cut the dirt around our position, tink-tink-tinkin the Rover, and I lunged and radioed our SAS counterparts for backup.

  Some of us scurried through the smoke and dove and set in on the backside of a little dune. Diaz was calling in our coordinates to air support. I heard a buzzing sound and saw a team of SAS on motorcycles coming up in the rear. I was laying on heavy fire with my Heckler, and next to me Dithers was blasting rapidfire bursts with his SAW. A feather of smoke curled up off the tip of Dithers’s SAW. “Your barrel.” I said. “You’re melting.” And that’s when I saw the moonlit shadow fall in the sand in front of me, and that’s when Dithers let out an earsplitting scream. I rolled over just in time to see the Iraqi soldier lunging at me, driving his WWII-style bayonet glittering with Dithers’s blood right at my chest. Dithers’s arm had been sliced off and was lying in the sand off by itself, and the hand of the arm was still clutching the barrel he’d been trying to change out.

  There was a chain-saw buzz and an SAS dude in a black jumpsuit plowed into the Iraqi with his motorcycle, planting him in the sand next to me. The Iraqi was doing the funky chicken, flopping around like something neural had been severely damaged. I looked at Dithers and a red flower of blood had begun to bloom at his armless shoulder socket. “Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus
.” he cried out. “I can’t feel my legs. Oh Jesus. I’m so cold. I’m so cold.” Now there was blood everywhere. Blood on Dithers, blood in the sand.

  “Hang in there, buddy. Just relax. You’re okay. Just relax, Dithers.”

  MY VISION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, AND THE ENSUING EPIPHANY

  Then, and I don’t know why I did this, I glanced up for a split second, and I saw George Washington right out there in the middle of all the smoke and chaos. He was shirtless, sitting in a wooden hot tub with his arms draped around two blond girls in bikinis. There was a patch of fuzzy white pubic hair on his chest. I saw a half-eaten burrito perched on the edge of the tub. George had his head tilted back in open-mouth laughter, with the moonlight winking in his giant ivory teeth, but suddenly he stopped and looked at me and his face lit up, and he said, “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you, G.D.” He smiled. “Come,” he said, and lifted one hand and nonchalantly waved me over, mafioso style. “You must be tired. Come reap some of the rewards of all your toil on the battlefield, son. This is Carrie and Belinda.” The girls giggled. Washington held up an apple. “We’re going to bob for apples. How does that sound? You want to bob for apples? I sure could use your help, son, because I don’t think I can handle it alone, if you know what I mean?” he said with a wink, and gestured expansively, spreading his arms wide behind the girls’ shoulders. Just then a young African American man strolled up behind George carrying a tray on which were three silver goblets, and said, “Yous ready fo y’alls drinks, mastah?”

  Dithers screamed. I glanced down at Dithers, and when I looked back up George Washington was gone. And that’s when the weight of it all—the senselessness of war, the absurdity of America and its ideals, its bloody history of oppression, its macho Christian religious certainty—finally came flooding into my mind like a great white ray of liquid light. What the hell am I doing here? I asked myself. How can you defend a country that slaughtered the entire Native American race, a majestic civilization which patented the moccasin and controlled the weather through a primitive, wireless form of break dancing? Why should We The People be exalted for having obliterated the peace pipe in favor of irony and the crack pipe? A country whose publicity-starved flag is a prophylactic against compassion, and is synonymous with a heat-seeking penis (God), waving its ignorant seed of disregard and entitlement in every beleaguered face it can find. A country whose secret service conspired to shoot its premiere motivational speaker, Martin Luther King. A country which steamrolls across the planet like an obese golf ball, contaminating innocent indigenous peoples with its tech-based White Virus, while knighting murderous dictators as CEOs in the so-called new global economy. A country where women are deported to a cell (kitchen) and held captive in the shackles of an apron, handcuffed with spatulas and cake-making devices, and where in the currency of human dignity a vagina relegates its owner to the status of a food stamp. Why doesn’t America’s Power Elite recognize that a person who can issue milk from her nipples is clearly superior to a person who cannot. A woman president would be able to feed America’s hungry babies with her nipples. And where does the word honor fit into all this? Then I gave myself the answer: You are a goddamn fool.

  So right then and there, with the unshakable resolve of a man who has had the blinders ripped from his eyes after wandering for so long in complete darkness, I scooped up Dithers, who’d passed out by then, and started to walk off. Marty, firing his pistol desperately, glanced at me and shouted, “G.D., what’re you doing?” There were maybe twenty Iraqis now, firing and advancing on our position, rushing up and hitting the sand on the fly. Dead sheep littered the landscape like fallen clouds. I could hear screams, weapons cooking off, motorcycles, sheep bleating, but in a sense, it already seemed far away. I kept walking, picking up my pace, and glanced over my shoulder. Marty shouted again. “Hey, G.D., get your ass over here, motherfucker. What’re you doing?” Marty was on his feet now, still firing his pistol. I slung Dithers over my shoulder and started to jog, looking back at Marty. As Marty was glaring at me, a flying Iraqi bum-rushed him and they were instantly grappling in a sandy commotion till death did they part. And then, with Dithers slung across my shoulders in the fireman’s carry, I fled for my life, south, my heart in my throat, away from the fighting and chaos, leaving Dithers’s arm and Green Beret behind me forever.

  MY DAD THE VIETNAM HERO, WHO NOW READS CHOMSKY, PLUS DAD’S VIGILANT ANTIWAR PROTEST

  Everybody in Green Beret knows about my dad. He’s a distinguished Green Beret alum, with a Medal of Honor from Vietnam, and you can find his name on the Wall of Fame at the Special Forces Training Center in Fayetteville. Like a lot of veterans, Dad never talked about The Nam. Whenever I asked him about it he’d tell me to shut up. And when Desert Storm started and we were called up, my dad wrote a letter to my commanding officer, Captain Larthrop, telling him that as a former Green Beret he vehemently opposed America’s participation in Desert Storm. He quoted Noam Chomsky’s famous essay “The Invisible Flag,” which apparently states among other things that the Invisible Flag “waves for all of humanity.” And my dad wrote Larthrop that he could not sit by and watch American boys get bogged down in another Vietnam quagmire, another “intervention,” and so as an act of protest—he has a twisted sense of humor—he was coming out of the closet, was turning gay. He wrote me a letter explaining the whole thing. He informed me that he had taken a lover, a forty-six-year-old criminal lawyer named Rob whom he’d met at his yoga class at the Y. The same Y we used to do yoga together at when I was growing up. I felt betrayed. He said Rob had been openly gay for his entire life and that Rob was being a great support during the transition period. The whole letter was Rob this and Rob that, like I was supposed to be grateful or something.

  I wrote my dad back. Lots of times. I begged him to reconsider his position. I used whatever logic suited my argument. I told him first and foremost that what he was doing was an affront to the gay community, and that he should be careful about what his method of protest implied. I sent him articles clipped from Science magazine explaining how gay people had no more choice over their sexual preference than heterosexual people did, that it was all genetics. He wrote me back to inform me that he had just sent a letter to Jesse Helms’s office, suggesting that North Carolina make a motion to legalize gay marriages. He said, Maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but this is the happiest I’ve been in years. I sent him a Times article describing the vicious underground militia of the gay organization B.P.C. (Better Population Control), and that he should watch out because they’d be pissed if they heard about the mockery he was making of their sexual orientation. He sent me back a full-color photograph of a naked blue-eyed man sitting on a porous rock on a beach in Jamaica that had been clipped from a magazine called Out, and scrawled at the bottom of it in my dad’s handwriting was: “This is still a free country, right?” And he’d drawn a little smiley face.

  That last letter took the wind out of my sails, and I didn’t write him back. I guess I also thought it would blow over, but my dad called the Raleigh News and Observer and they broke the story. The story spun, and it suddenly got a ton of media play. A highly decorated Vietnam soldier, former Special Forces with a Medal of Honor, as an act of protest, announces that he will be gay until every single American boy is home safely. My dad was a guest on all the TV and talk-radio shows, liberal, right wing, it didn’t matter to him, he was just looking to get his message out. Rush Limbaugh had a field day with it, brought him and Rob on his TV show for an interview. I didn’t watch it, but Dithers did. Dithers said the title of the show was “American Hero Bends Over for Peace.”

  My dad’s got a pretty good sense of humor, so he wore a wry grin the whole time and busted jokes and kept the aggressive audience in stitches, is what Dithers said. When it comes to being a wiseass, you really can’t mess with my dad.

  DITHERS’S DANGEROUS COMA, AND THE INADVERTENT DISCOVERY OF BUNKER

  With Dithers slung across my back in a fireman’s ca
rry, I fled south along the foamy bank of the Euphrates. I ran for hours and hours, not stopping to think about the magnitude of what I’d just done, afraid that if I did I might lose my nerve and turn back around. The cold night wind bounced off the water and blew through my bones, and in the chaos of my mind I hoped maybe it would sweep me up like a kite and carry me to a land far, far away from there. Dithers had slipped into a dangerous coma, and I kept stopping to douse his wound with water, and then patched it up as best I could with a T-shirt. Then it was more shuffling, guided by the North Star. I cannot remember much from that time. I recall a rock I camped under at the bank of the river, and I remember Dithers coming to at one point and shouting, “Help,” and then passing back out. It was well into the second night that I saw from a distance the great paved highway with the fires blazing alongside it. I was gasping for air as I came up to the edge of the highway. I heard someone shout in Arabic, and the flash of a muzzle lit up next to the skeleton of a bombed-out car. “Stop,” I said. “Salaam alaikum.” Which is the only Arabic I know, and it means “peace be with you.” A whole slew of flashes erupted, and the sand around my feet was jumping in the air, making it difficult to see. I did not have any fight left in me, and I resigned myself to whatever happened, and in a way, that desperation is what gave me courage. I knew nothing could hurt me now as I scrambled to the other side of the six-lane highway in a flurry of enemy fire, nothing, that is, except for an errant round that shaved off a quarter inch of my kneecap. The pain exploded up my spine, and my brain went wet with shock and fear. Even now I’ve got a slight limp. I collapsed facefirst into the sand, using Dithers to break my fall. I got to one knee and dragged Dithers behind the cover of two huge boulders, and that’s when I spotted the steel in the sand. One of the Iraqis was blowing a whistle very loudly, and there were shouts, and I heard the men scrambling in my direction. I yanked back the steel hatch, and threw Dithers in first, and then I jumped down in, pulling the hatch to. The fall was about ten feet, and Dithers and I crashed in a heap on the ground. It would only be later that I found the steel ladder fastened to the wall. I heard the soldiers shouting in Arabic up above. I held my breath in fear, and my heart knocked on the door of my rib cage. I saw the milk white of my kneecap where the bullet had shaved off the skin and felt woozy. Finally the soldiers up above us moved on. It was only then that I noticed the horrible stench of the place. Screeching sounds erupted from what sounded like the center of the earth. With Dithers in my arms like a newlywed, I ventured cautiously down the hall, casting the beam of my flashlight over the concrete walls.