FUTURE OHIO SENATOR PAUL HACKETT EXPLAINS WHY HE THINKS BUSH IS A COKE-SNORTING, BOOZE-GUZZLING PUSSY

I haven't read ESQUIRE in a long time. Someone turned me on to an online advance excerpt from the December issue called 16 DEAD IN OHIO by Kenneth Cain. It's a powerful and gripping story. And, via the rhythm of a CSNY song, harkens back to another war that turned very unpopular and how deaths in Ohio-- that time at Kent State University-- helped to hasten its conclusion.

The ESQUIRE story is about the tragic deaths of 16 young men from Lima Company as part of Bush's catastrophic Iraq adventure. Cain brings the tragedy home to America very viscerally and very personally. It is also the story of two Paul's who did not die in Iraq, the father of one dead marine Augie Palmer, and a marine officer who is running for the U.S. Senate.

"Sitting on their front porch under a flapping Marine Corps flag," Cain finds Augie's grieving parents, Rosemary and Paul who he says "are the picture of midwestern moderation and grace. Like all the grieving families I’ve met, they are especially focused on their final correspondence with their son. Augie had been frustrated that his unit was forced to return again and again to Euphrates River towns to clear out insurgents they’d already cleared out. In his last conversation with his father, Augie had said that the tactic of sweeping towns and then withdrawing only to return again was becoming 'less and less worth it.'”

Cain introduces us to Paul as "a thoughtful, restrained man who teaches a thirty-six-week Bible-study course at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights (where Rosemary chairs the Membership and Evangelism Committee), but his anger toward the Bush administration is palpable. 'I blame Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and George Bush for the death of my son,' he says slowly and quietly. 'I don’t think Bush is supporting the troops. He claims he is, but he’s not. Otherwise he would have had enough troops there so that IED that blew up my son would not have been in the road. I use my son as an example, but multiply that by 2,000.' The day after they buried Augie, Rosemary and Paul went public with their critique, reading a statement from their front lawn to a collection of local reporters. Even amid the intense coverage of Ohio’s losses that week, Paul’s statement stood out for its controlled, articulate fury. 'Mr. President, our son was a Marine,' Paul said. 'He was obliged to do his duty without public complaint and did that faithfully. We, sir, are not so constrained. Now you have to deal with us and a growing number of Americans who think you have created a mess that you do not have the capacity to end.' And this: 'We ask you to recognize that our comments are not just those of grieving parents. They are based on anger, Mr. President, not grief. Anger is an honest emotion when someone’s family has been violated.'"

It wouldn't be fair for me to quote Cain's whole piece; you should read it though. The human emotions are palpable, even overwhelming and it is more than clear that Rosemary and Paul, Cain says "despite" but he could have said "because of" their faith, "are deeply offended by the direction much of the religious rhetoric that surrounds them has taken. 'The religious right should read their Bible a bit more carefully,' Paul says. 'Listen to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. You’re not going to find a George Bush in that sermon. It’s a gospel of love. That’s God’s grace. A lot of churches are forgetting the most important element of Christianity, and that’s grace. Fear is not grace. Does that mean you don’t punish culprits who are responsible for 9/11? No, you have to punish them. But don’t punish everybody. We’re killing a lot of Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11. Don’t kill innocents and create chaos. Look at how we go about spreading our gospel of Western democracy: We’re demanding almost permanent war to demonstrate and exercise our power.' He is most provoked by the manner in which he believes religious faith has been exploited politically in order to muzzle opposition to the war that killed his son. 'When Bush wraps himself in Christian faith, combines it with patriotism, and says they come from the same place, that implies that if you question or oppose him you are unpatriotic and ungodly, not just of a different opinion. That negates the power of my own faith. It negates the faith of people who disagree with him. I resent it. There’s something horrible about that. It’s un-American. It’s certainly anti-Christian.'”

Paul and Rosemary get lots and lots of calls and e-mails from other military parents, thanking them for having the courage to speak up publicly. Another Ohioan who has been speaking up publicly and who Cain caught up with for ESQUIRE is Paul Hackett. If you read DWT you already know about Hackett's valiant struggle to win a congressional seat, as a progressive Democrat, in one of the reddest districts in America (only to be beaten, barely, by far right crack whore, Jeanne Schmidt, who showed herself to be certifiably insane on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives a few nights ago.

Hackett is now in the midst of taking on Ohio's bland conservative Bush-supporting Senator Mike DeWine and recent polls show him beating DeWine in 2006 (although in Ohio legitimate polls have to be taken with a grain of salt as long as the corrupt one-party state is run by the political machine of criminals like Governor Bob Taft and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell).

The 6'2" marine is not a big fan of the Bush Regime. Cain visited him at home and lets Hackett explain his attitude toward Bush's war and occupation. “We’re in ‘patriotism lite.’ People put a yellow ribbon on their SUV and they’re convinced that makes you a patriot—but by virtue of your zip code, you know your kid’s not going, while other people’s kids in the field don’t have enough gear.”

Cain found Hackett going out of his way to explain that he is not antiwar. “Look, Marines like combat. That’s just a fact. It’s a self-selecting group of guys, and when you get into battle, it’s confirmed that you love it as much as you thought you would. I want to tell you something: I loved being in Fallujah. This is what we train for, what we do. We’re professionals. If it’s Somalia, fine; Iraq, fine; Afghanistan, fine. I enjoyed it.” But he goes on and Cain points out a divergence in his critique, a path not every marine or soldier has taken when they returned from war. "The military has been misused by this administration. Bush has to swallow his own words. In 2000 he said, ‘I will not use the military to nation-build.’ Excuse me, Mr. President, what are you doing? We’re nation building. We’re building schools, infrastructure, forming a democracy—so we think—that they don’t want. It’s not in their culture. It ain’t gonna work. By any standard military definition, we have succeeded in nothing in Iraq. We don’t even hold any ground. We can’t drive the roads over there safely. We stopped Fallujah in November. Guess what. It’s a hotbed of insurgency again... How we get used has nothing to do with who we are. That’s the difference. Marines are a tool. If I criticize the war, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the tool. I am the tool. I’m gung ho as hell. I love the Marine Corps.”

Cain doesn't shy away from Hackett having called Bush a chicken hawk during the campaign. In ESQUIRE, Cain quotes him saying “Bush didn’t serve his country during the defining war of his generation. That makes him a chicken hawk. He’s been less than forthright about his service, which in my book makes him dishonest. And he’s mentally lazy at best. He lacks any interest in inquiry, as reflected by the fact that he signs off on whatever flavor of the day to explain why we’re in Iraq. Bush is a fraud. He wants to be perceived as a macho guy, but he didn’t have the stones to serve in his generation’s war. He didn’t have the balls to do it. Point fucking blank. He didn’t have the balls. Because he wanted to drink alcohol and snort cocaine and party. Well, I didn’t do that.”