When I was a sophomore in college way back in 1999, I shared my dormroom with a very nice Chicano guy who arrived in Ohio from L.A. as a slightly out of shape trombone major. Within a few months he decided to double major in trombone and political science and started working out almost every day. Over that same time, he traded about 30 pounds of fat for lean muscle and went from wanting to play music somewhere to wanting to serve his country as an officer in the Marines. Over lunch we'd talk about a wide range of topics, many around the major political issues of the day. At one of the most leftist colleges in the country, Julian had been mocked many times by student's locally popular opinions on current events and he expressed sincere frustration during our conversations.
Knowing (and liking) him as I did, I really wanted to find a common ground between Julian and everyone else, and so did he. He wasn't some meathead warmonger. He was a very moral, thoughtful and dedicated guy who was choosing an honorable path for his life. He was like a lot of the best people who decide to join the armed forces. There had to be another way of looking at the issue. As someone interested in international aid and development I saw huge opportunities in exploiting the military's training management abilities, not to mention their pocketbook in looking at non-military but activist projects for the biggest defense spender in the world. This idea was in much better harmony with those times than today. We weren't immersed in a full-scale war, and we'd become embroiled in the Balkans on such a cooperative mission. Compared to now, America looked like a benevolent big brother to the world. Why couldn't the military dig latrines and build schools? They are idealistic, organized, know how to get things done, and have the full faith and credit of the American taxpayer.
Julian was sworn in as an officer in the Marine Corps under the nearest American flag to our college graduation ceremony, and that was the last I ever saw or heard from him. It was less than two years later that we were invading Iraq, another year later and the message changed from Weapons of Mass Destruction to the more contemporary democratic nationbuilding line we've been hearing ever since. It turned out that the Pentagon had the same aid and development idea all along; they just didn't think it was as good a sell as chemical munitions.
Despite intermittently good intentions, none of this worked. Everyone knows the story. In our arrogance, we never secured the place properly or took any number of basic facts into account, like keeping track of who's sunni, who's shia and why it matters. We went from benevolent big brother to old, lost alcoholic caught in the wrong part of town and looking for a payphone to call mom.
We never really got around to completing the big civics projects we had in mind. Baghdad is in a perpetual state of brown-out, the water's still not safe to drink, and all those contractors with offshore accounts sure aren't getting paid with Iraqi oil money.
Putting aside the completely destructive variety of insurgent that one could actually brand a terrorist, we've also got competition when it comes to digging latrines. Many groups funded by allies, friends and enemies all competing to do a better job than us to get the lights on and the kids off to school. Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army is a destructive force-- outside of its Shi'ite land holdings. Inside, they provide food, security, schooling and livelihoods to their constituents.
Al Sadr would be nobody if he neglected this. He'd be in charge of a group of isolated guerrillas whose existence depended on funding from the outside and a willingness to die for the cause. He'd end up like al Qaeda's man in Iraq, al Zarqawi; dead because he'd be a clean target. Instead, Al Sadr's group has been branded even more dangerous than Al Qaeda by the Pentagon. We can't do anything about him, and he's proving far more effective at doing our job in Iraq.
As things go from bad to worse in Iraq, Julian's been on my mind more and more. He believed more than anyone else I knew in the power of the US to intervene in the world for good. I still think we can change the world. I think this is a fundamental belief for many Americans. We can and should intervene, but how?
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Chris, 1977-2006
Chris was the big brother of one of my wife's best friends from when she lived out in Portland, Oregon in the late nineties. I remember him as present and close in the life of his little sister Kirsten as they both tried to figure their lives out working odd jobs and sharing group houses in their early twenties. We've got pictures of Chris giving Kirsten a piggy back ride up Mount Hood on one of their days off. They were both from Fairbanks, Alaska and far from home; they were unusually close for brothers and sisters. Chris worked at bike shops, enjoyed skiing, being outside, and spending time among a group of very close friends. Myself being an outsider to a group of people who spent much of their free time together, I remember Chris as a calm and welcoming presence. He was always good for conversation, always bringing me into the fold, making me feel like more than someone's boyfriend visiting on his spring break. I have spotty memories of goofing off to music in his basement, and going to pick blackberries on the Sandy River during the summer I came to live with my wife to be. He was one of a short list of people I hardly knew but felt very fond of.
My wife-to-be moved back east and Chris stayed in Portland while Kirsten moved down to San Francisco to pursue a degree in graphic art. Between getting married and spending less time out west, I hadn't heard much about either of them as the years passed. It was a shock to hear that he passed away in his sleep in mid-September. When someone dies suddenly at age 29, the first thoughts are drugs or suicide. But Chris was the victim of something else-- the maddening, confusing and expensive reality that young people working by the hour so often face when confronted with a health problem. Chris died because he was part of the working uninsured.
From snippets of phone conversations that my wife had with her friends out in San Francisco, I learned that Chris had gone through a bad patch of depression; so bad that he sought help out of pocket instead of just trying to tough it out. He was prescribed medication, but it wasn't long before he began having seizures. Chris stopped taking the pills, but the seizures continued. His girlfriend had to take him to the emergency room at least three times over a period of a few months. One morning he had another bad seizure that landed him in the ER again, but he was discharged a few hours later, and went home to take it easy. His girlfriend called the next morning, but there was no answer. Chris had another episode that night and suffocated alone in his bed.
As I get older I can look back at the photos we have from that time and I see now that I have two categories of friends-- the salaried and the waged. One has comprehensive health benefits, goes to have check-ups, and if there is an emergency, gets admitted into the hospital for a full work-up. The other category sweats through a case of the flu, avoids getting stitches if possible, and doesn't try to think about what would happen if they got in a car accident, or if they really got sick. They are betting that their youth will get them through the years where they don't have benefits. Given the same situation that Chris found himself, one category goes to get a CT scan and finds out what's wrong, and the other bounces in and out of the emergency room until one day it's too late. It was certainly a wake-up call for me-- a fundamental divide across the very people I know and care for.
On a road trip a few years ago, I was chatting with a father and son from Oklahoma over a few beers at a casino in Reno. I told them what I did for a living in my usual soundbite saying, "We try to get more health care to more people for cheaper". The father sighed and said, "You're a liberal then. You know, if it's a hot day and all the kids are playing outside, is it the government's responsibility to give all the kids popsicles?" The only thing I could think to say was, "Health care isn't popsicles." And it isn't.
Chris shouldn't have died. He shouldn't have been hastily discharged from the hospital after such a history of seizures, and he wouldn't have been if he was insured. He should have been able to afford a doctor's visit and any referrals to specialists, if they were needed. At an average of $3300 an ER visit, it is a fallacy to think that getting help up front would cost more in any long-run sense. It is also morally unforgivable that we allow the people who fit us for a pair of shoes, make us sandwiches, or sell us a bike to live at their own risk. Any argument against this is draws from an essentially selfish ethos. The uninsured isn't some abstract problem, it lives and dies among us all. Our health care system shouldn't be predicated on some lecture on personal responsibility; these are our friends we're talking about, our brothers and sisters. It's just plain cheaper and it saves lives to cover every last person out there. This isn't about popsicles. This isn't some developing country, this is America. Let's find a way. We can and should prevent these needless deaths.
My wife-to-be moved back east and Chris stayed in Portland while Kirsten moved down to San Francisco to pursue a degree in graphic art. Between getting married and spending less time out west, I hadn't heard much about either of them as the years passed. It was a shock to hear that he passed away in his sleep in mid-September. When someone dies suddenly at age 29, the first thoughts are drugs or suicide. But Chris was the victim of something else-- the maddening, confusing and expensive reality that young people working by the hour so often face when confronted with a health problem. Chris died because he was part of the working uninsured.
From snippets of phone conversations that my wife had with her friends out in San Francisco, I learned that Chris had gone through a bad patch of depression; so bad that he sought help out of pocket instead of just trying to tough it out. He was prescribed medication, but it wasn't long before he began having seizures. Chris stopped taking the pills, but the seizures continued. His girlfriend had to take him to the emergency room at least three times over a period of a few months. One morning he had another bad seizure that landed him in the ER again, but he was discharged a few hours later, and went home to take it easy. His girlfriend called the next morning, but there was no answer. Chris had another episode that night and suffocated alone in his bed.
As I get older I can look back at the photos we have from that time and I see now that I have two categories of friends-- the salaried and the waged. One has comprehensive health benefits, goes to have check-ups, and if there is an emergency, gets admitted into the hospital for a full work-up. The other category sweats through a case of the flu, avoids getting stitches if possible, and doesn't try to think about what would happen if they got in a car accident, or if they really got sick. They are betting that their youth will get them through the years where they don't have benefits. Given the same situation that Chris found himself, one category goes to get a CT scan and finds out what's wrong, and the other bounces in and out of the emergency room until one day it's too late. It was certainly a wake-up call for me-- a fundamental divide across the very people I know and care for.
On a road trip a few years ago, I was chatting with a father and son from Oklahoma over a few beers at a casino in Reno. I told them what I did for a living in my usual soundbite saying, "We try to get more health care to more people for cheaper". The father sighed and said, "You're a liberal then. You know, if it's a hot day and all the kids are playing outside, is it the government's responsibility to give all the kids popsicles?" The only thing I could think to say was, "Health care isn't popsicles." And it isn't.
Chris shouldn't have died. He shouldn't have been hastily discharged from the hospital after such a history of seizures, and he wouldn't have been if he was insured. He should have been able to afford a doctor's visit and any referrals to specialists, if they were needed. At an average of $3300 an ER visit, it is a fallacy to think that getting help up front would cost more in any long-run sense. It is also morally unforgivable that we allow the people who fit us for a pair of shoes, make us sandwiches, or sell us a bike to live at their own risk. Any argument against this is draws from an essentially selfish ethos. The uninsured isn't some abstract problem, it lives and dies among us all. Our health care system shouldn't be predicated on some lecture on personal responsibility; these are our friends we're talking about, our brothers and sisters. It's just plain cheaper and it saves lives to cover every last person out there. This isn't about popsicles. This isn't some developing country, this is America. Let's find a way. We can and should prevent these needless deaths.
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