Fail Better

It’s January 1991, and I’m home from college on a month-long winter break. Every morning I get my old middle-school Schwinn out of the garage and ride through Brentwood to the West LA Federal Building, where I stand for hours holding a cardboard “NO WAR” sign. I am the only person there. I don’t know what I'm trying to accomplish,  exactly, but I feel compelled to take this public stand. As the days go by and Saddam Hussein pushes closer and closer to President Bush’s “line in the sand,” a few other people get the same idea – by late afternoon there are maybe five or ten of us lined up along the curb, facing down the rush hour traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. And then one day there’s a breaking point: the president declares war. The bombing begins. That evening hundreds of people appear, with solemn faces and handwritten signs. Someone is handing out candles. I see my mom coming through the crowd. She hugs me, and I see over her shoulder that she’s got my stepfather in tow. Wow, I think. Emmett at a protest – it’s really on now. 

Back at school we watch the airstrikes on TV. People talk about the war in class, in the dining hall, through the haze of cigarette smoke in the student lounge. I am full of self-important sorrow and righteous indignation. Flyers for draft resistance workshops appear on bulletin boards. Swarthmore students are surely among the least likely young men in the country to be drafted, but it’s suddenly become an imaginable scenario for the first time since – well, since my parents argued with their parents about Vietnam at Thanksgiving dinner. We trade stories of how our fathers and uncles hung on to their student deferments, applied to be conscientious objectors – or died in combat. One night I’m sprawled on the floor of Parrish Hall with a bunch of friends, and someone shouts down the stairs from her room on the second floor, “Hey guys – the ground war’s started.” 

Fast forward to the fall of 2001. The remains of the World Trade Center are still smoldering in lower Manhattan, and the FBI has raided the little Somali market at the end of my street, looking for evidence of terrorist ties. Bush’s son, George W., is in the Oval Office. I stop by the market with baby Simon in a stroller to say hello and offer whatever support I can – mostly just a friendly face, I guess. I write the president a letter in which I evoke the memory of all those people trapped on the upper floors of the towers, terrified on those hijacked planes, all calling their wives and mothers and kids to say “I love you” one last time. Not, I point out, “Find the people who did this and kill them.” “No,” I tell the president, “what they all wanted to say before they died was ‘I love you.’… I hope we can honor all of that last-minute love by looking for healing rather than vengeance, by seeking justice without rage, and by not lashing out and causing more deaths, more grief, more anger.” Three weeks later, we invade Afghanistan.

A year goes by, and the saber-rattling increases. There’s talk of unfinished business in Iraq: WMDs, yellowcake uranium, “the smoking gun that might turn out to be a mushroom cloud.” I call my senators and congressman. Two of the three vote no on the bill to authorize military force; the bill passes. On a cloudy February morning Andrew and I pack up the kids and head to Volunteer Park to join a peace march. We park our red Subaru wagon, unload the stroller for Josie, affix a “PEACE STARTS HERE” sign to the backpack Simon is riding in, and join the slow stream of people making their way toward the amphitheater. We emerge from the thicket of trees onto the field – and lo, thousands of people are here, milling around in bright-colored raingear. They’re hoisting banners up on poles, crouching on the grass to color in the letters on their cardboard signs, greeting each other with rueful, tired smiles. Bullhorn garble wafts up from the stage below. My heart floods. Look at all these people. Thank God, it’s not just me. 

The march moves downtown, filling the streets with chanting and singing. I’m soaking it all in, doling out goldfish crackers to the children, feeling not hopeful, exactly, but determined. And connected, like we’re part of something big. There are so many of us – thousands marching in Seattle, millions all over the world – maybe we can turn the tide this time? Spoiler alert: we don’t. The invasion begins in March.

And now, nearly twenty years later, here we are again: the fallout from those earlier conflicts (plus countless others going back centuries) has swirled back around and brought us to the brink of war once more. The baby in the PEACE STARTS HERE backpack is now of draft age, and the man in the White House is now a dangerous child. I have some hope that the current crisis will blow over; I have some fear that it will get shoved aside by something even shinier and more explosive. Meanwhile my little trip down memory lane has made it clear that my war-prevention powers leave a lot to be desired – so I turn to the immortal words of cranky drunk (and anachronous innovation guru) Samuel Beckett: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." 

Anybody got any bright ideas?