Today's selections are studies in contrasts between people who see life through different lenses. In some cases the lessons learned are taken to heart and advance the human heart and understanding. In other cases, they point out the stark differences between talk and action and life and death.
The chickenhawks come to the House and get roasted. Representative Patrick McHenry, a 30-year-old Republican from North Carolina, rose during the recent debate over Iraq in Congress and declared that the struggle against "Islamic extremists" was his generation's great challenge. Unlike the "white flag" crowd on the left, he vowed, he would not shrink from the fight.
That was a little too much for Representative John Murtha, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, an ex-marine and Vietnam vet and also — in the current debate — a leading advocate of a speedy withdrawal of the troops.
"It is easy to stay in an air-conditioned office and say, 'I am going to stay the course,' " he said, angrily, after Mr. McHenry, who never served in the military, was finished. "It is the troops that are doing the fighting, not the members of Congress that are doing the fighting."
Behind that exchange was a demographic reality: The debate, which has consumed the House and the Senate for the last two weeks, was largely conducted by men and women who have not served. Twenty-five percent of the House, and 31 percent of the Senate, are veterans, the lowest proportions since World War II, according to the Military Officers Association of America.
Does it make a difference? Clearly Mr. Murtha felt it did, sharply criticizing some nonveteran hawks — notably Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist — for not understanding the reality in Iraq, the toll of "deploying people two or three times," the complexity of the mission.
"It's a very small segment that are making the sacrifices, and it's pretty easy to say, 'Let's keep them over there,' " Mr. Murtha said in an interview.
Some analysts have argued that there are clear differences between veterans and nonveterans in attitudes toward the use of American military power. Christopher Gelpi, associate professor of political science at Duke and co-author of "Choosing Your Battles," said his 1998-99 research showed that "veterans are very skeptical of the kind of mission that Iraq is: nation-building, a long commitment where our goals are really political more than military."
Moreover, Mr. Gelpi said, once the decision is made to intervene, veterans, like military officers, tend to lean toward using overwhelming force, an attitude of "let's do it right and do it large scale, or let's get out."
Still, there were vets in the recent debate who supported the idea of a timetable on troop withdrawal, and vets who endorsed President Bush's more open-ended commitment to American troops in Iraq (a debate that ended with votes beating back Democratic calls for withdrawal). For example, Mr. Murtha's Republican colleague, Representative Duncan Hunter, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is also a decorated Vietnam vet, and led the charge for the Bush position.
In fact, partisanship might explain more about lawmakers' positions than military backgrounds. William Bianco, professor of political science at Indiana University, said his study on voting patterns showed that, "in the main, veterans look like nonveterans in Congress, on any dimension we can measure."
And some historians dismiss the notion that military experience, in and of itself, grants lawmakers wisdom concerning war and peace. "Just because somebody in the 50's got drafted for two years and spent 18 months as a typist at Fort Dix doesn't necessarily give you any particular insight into issues of national security," said Dennis Showalter, professor of history at Colorado College.
But David King, associate director at the Institute of Politics at Harvard, worries that there is, in today's politics, a shortage of people "with a background in the service who can speak truth to both military and political power." He cited Harry Truman, who served in France in World War I and rose to prominence as a senator in the early 1940's from investigating military procurement.
Indeed, men like Mr. Murtha derive much of their influence — on Capitol Hill and with the public at large — from their status as tough-minded combat veterans. Mr. Murtha transformed the debate over the war last fall when he called for a withdrawal.
Some veterans say that combat experience — even more rare in Congress than general military experience — does make them different. "The world is a lot bigger after you've been in a war," said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska who lost a leg in Vietnam and won the Medal of Honor. "There's a lot less black and white, and a lot more gray."
Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and another decorated Vietnam vet, said combat experience "doesn't mean we're right, but we do bring a frame of reference when it comes to war." He added, "When you've never experienced war it's a little easier to be more cavalier about committing troops and not understanding the consequences of war."
Mr. Hagel, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq but has voiced many doubts, was one of several veterans who seemed dismayed by the sharply partisan campaign-style oratory many politicians took to the debate. "Our men and women doing the fighting — and dying — deserve better," he said on the Senate floor.
Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern, calls this the era of "patriotism lite" on Capitol Hill — noting that not only are there few veterans, but also few lawmakers with children in the armed services. That first statistic, at least, might change — the war in Iraq has produced a wave of veterans running for office now.
Kramer v. Kramer -- the playwright and the lawyer, gay v. straight -- and two brothers who reconcile their differences.In his wrenching autobiographical play about AIDS in New York in the 1980's, Larry Kramer made his brother the face of evil in an uncaring world.
The conflict between the brothers in that play, "The Normal Heart," was the consummate coming-out story, a tale reflected in many families. The straight brother couldn't find it in his heart to renounce his gay sibling, yet couldn't wholeheartedly accept him as normal, either.
Their story came to define an era for hundreds of thousands of theatergoers.
More than 20 years after the play opened, Larry and Arthur Kramer are talking again. Their lives have trumped art. Their relationship has gone through a series of changes, and in the last decade, the brothers have become close collaborators on gay rights issues.
Last month, Arthur Kramer's law firm was among those arguing for gay marriage before New York State's highest court, and a decision in that case could come as soon as this week. His firm has spent countless hours of overtime working on other gay causes across the country, from adopting children to serving as scoutmasters.
How true was the fictional account of Kramer v. Kramer? Have times changed at the same pace as the brothers? In some ways, the arc of their relationship is, writ small, the arc of the culture war raging across the stage of American life and politics.
The changes didn't happen overnight, like a religious awakening. They happened slowly, almost imperceptibly.
"It was me learning through my activism and growth that being gay wasn't bad, and I wasn't going to let it be bad," Larry said. "And having to convince him and the world it wasn't bad, and him coming around."
Now, he said, "He and my lover are the two most meaningful people in my life."
For Arthur, the reconciliation came as he accepted that his brother was not going to change, and that being gay was a matter of biology, not choice or family dysfunction. "I was persuaded over time that there was nothing you could do about it, and it was my problem," Arthur said. "That's the way he is."
Frank Rich looks at the world of the soldiers doing the nation-building in Iraq, the lobbyists who are doing it here, and the world of difference between the two.AS the remains of two slaughtered American soldiers, Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, were discovered near Yusufiya, Iraq, on Tuesday, a former White House official named David Safavian was convicted in Washington on four charges of lying and obstruction of justice. The three men had something in common: all had enlisted in government service in a time of war. The similarities end there. The difference between Mr. Safavian's kind of public service and that of the soldiers says everything about the disconnect between the government that has sabotaged this war and the brave men and women who have volunteered in good faith to fight it.
Privates Tucker and Menchaca made the ultimate sacrifice. Their bodies were so mutilated that they could be identified only by DNA. Mr. Safavian, by contrast, can be readily identified by smell. His idea of wartime sacrifice overseas was to chew over government business with the Jack Abramoff gang while on a golfing junket in Scotland. But what's most indicative of Mr. Safavian's public service is not his felonies in the Abramoff-Tom DeLay axis of scandal, but his legal activities before his arrest. In his DNA you get a snapshot of the governmental philosophy that has guided the war effort both in Iraq and at home (that would be the Department of Homeland Security) and doomed it to failure.
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In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the well-connected, Mr. Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty reconnaissance for Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.
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If we had honored our grand promises to the people we were liberating, Dick Cheney's prediction that we would be viewed as liberators might have had a chance of coming true. Greater loyalty from the civilian population would have helped reduce the threat to American soldiers, who are prey to insurgents in places like Yusufiya. But what we've wrought instead is a variation on Arthur Miller's post-World War II drama, "All My Sons." Working from a true story, Miller told the tragedy of a shoddy contractor whose defectively manufactured aircraft parts led directly to the deaths of a score of Army pilots and implicitly to the death of his own son.
Back then such a scandal was a shocking anomaly. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is taking to blow this one.
