Send the boys back

A few days ago I wrote a piece on the withdrawal of the last American troops from Iraq.  It was long, bitter, and angry and I decided not to post it.  But it concluded with “we told you so,” and it’s a conclusion I stand behind. So then I published it anyway.

Michael Tomasky has written a better piece on why the right will soon start to publish accounts of how we actually won, and why it is Bush who should get the credit, not Obama.  It’s worth reading here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/16/michael-tomasky-the-republican-whitewash-of-the-iraq-war-to-come.html

Or, if things go bad, it’s Obama’s fault.

Personally, I think the campaign has already started.  Iraq’s government is splintering, violence is on the rise, and people in and out of the country are talking about a new civil war.  And John McCain says its Obama’s fault.  He should have left behind a few thousand combat troops.  In another nine years, we can take another look.

Mary made me do it

I had actually decided against buying another motorcycle, but Mary talked me into it.

The week before, I had a CT scan to follow up on a chest x-ray my family doctor had done as part of my routine physical.  Also, I still haven't completely recovered from the horrible cough I got in Mexico.  Although he was “absolutely comfortable” with what he saw, he wanted me to have the more detailed scan to determine if I might have lung cancer or not.  He saw something in the x-ray that caused him at least some concern.

I was never too worried about it, though I certainly had it much in mind as I reflected on my twenty-five years of heavy smoking and the occasional relapse even now, twenty years after I finally “quit.”

Even when I started smoking in 1965, we knew we were at risk for lung cancer and various other life-threatening conditions, but I did it anyway without a second thought.

I blame my parents.  They were smokers, too, and statistics show that children who grow up in smoking households are vastly more likely to smoke themselves.  I also blame my brother, who conveniently left packs of Pall Malls lying around so I could steal them now and then.  This is probably why we haven’t spoken for almost thirty years.  He was really pissed off about those cigarettes.

I certainly don’t blame myself since I’ve always had low impulse control, which is not my fault.  The devil made me do it, and if I had to have lung cancer, I didn’t want to carry around a lot of guilt about it. 

Anyway, it was a tense week waiting for the actual test and then the results, and if I wasn’t particularly worried, Mary was.  Shortly after we got the good news, she said I should go ahead and buy the bike.  Might as well do it now rather than wait too long and have to put it on a bucket list. 

Thing is, I already have a large collection of things I decided I should do now, including my recent trip to Mexico.  The trick for us seniors is always to try to guess how long we’re going to live.  The goal is to go broke the day we die and freely indulge all of our big-ticket-impulses up to that final minute.  It would be just my luck to live ten years too long and have to actually live on my pension for all that time.  I’m doing my best to keep spending at a relatively high level so I won’t have to face that grim reality.

In the meantime, “no one knows what tomorrow may bring,” as the old hymn reminds us, and for me, that’s an invitation to live like I might die tomorrow.  Or preferably, some time ten or twenty years from now, but still with a couple bucks in my savings account.

In the meantime, “beat the bucket.”  That’s my motto.  

Welcome Home

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was in Iraq yesterday to say job-well-done to the last American troops coming home.  President Obama met with soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and was warmly received as he thanked them for their service.  I can only add my own humble “thank you for your service,” though it always sounds hollow to me.  Only “I’m sorry for your loss” might be more empty and pointless to the families of the fallen. 

Personally, I prefer “welcome home” to those who made it back.  It was only a few years ago that a counselor I was seeing was the first person ever to say “welcome home” to me as a Vietnam veteran, and to my own amazement, I burst into tears.  Forty years after the fact, I’m not looking for any thanks, but it’s nice that someone recognizes I was even gone.

There’s a deafening silence on this last day of our war from the likes of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the dozen or so other neo-cons who pushed us into the abyss nine years ago.  No claims of victory from them.  Are they playing golf today?  Are they ashamed of what they’ve done?  “Possibly,” and “certainly not.” 

I was so amazed at the time that still so soon after Vietnam, most Americans didn’t recognize the same mix of outright lies and gross distortions of fact that got us into that earlier pointless, doomed-to-failure and far-away war.  Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations about “weapons of mass destruction” would not have got a search warrant from a local district attorney and it failed to get an endorsement from the UN, but in we went anyway.  I couldn’t believe this was happening again, but it was, and so few others seemed to see the parallels.  The press at the time failed utterly to report on the wealth of evidence demonstrating that the neo-cons’ case was a house of cards. 

But maybe not utterly, and maybe not so few.  There actually was a large and vocal opposition to the invasion, but it got precious little coverage and it certainly never got equal time, let alone a full hearing.  At least Oregon’s congressional Democrats voted unanimously against the invasion.  They had no effect, but it mattered to me and my friends and colleagues who stood amazed as the Bush administration maneuvered public opinion over the course of months to the point where they could say they had a majority of public support.  I have never in my life seen such a distorted and intense propaganda campaign.  At the time of the invasion, a large majority of Americans believed we had an endorsement from the UN, although the best Bush could patch together was a rag-tag “coalition of the willing,” many of the willing being tiny, weak countries who depended on American foreign aid and who sent at best a handful of advisers then pulled them out a few months later. 

Four-thousand, five-hundred Americans have died, tens of thousands seriously wounded, physically and mentally.  Estimates of Iraqi deaths range from over one-hundred thousand to one million.  In any case, lots and lots of dead Iraqis.  Are the Iraqis better off now that Saddam is dead?  Is the region in any way more stable?  Have we “projected American power abroad”?  What a total fuck-up, the whole thing. 

And still, I feel enormous pride in our fighting men and women.  They were over-deployed and bore the whole burden, about one-percent of Americans at war while the rest of us sat home and were never called upon to make the smallest sacrifice. 

To those who fought the war, Welcome Home.  Thank you for your service. 

To no one in particular, we told you so.  

The Tiger revisited

1967 Triumph Tiger 650

2007 Triumph Tiger 1050

Two weeks ago I rode my Suzuki V-Strom 650 over to Hansen’s Motorcycles in Medford to buy a new hat.  Somehow I’d recently lost most of my baseball caps and thought I’d get one with a motorcycle logo: Hansen sells BMW, Ducati, and Triumph.

I found the Triumph cap I wanted and also got into a chat with the salesman about new bikes.  I like the line of Triumph 800cc triples but can’t afford the entry fee, so I told Russell I’d sure like to find a used Tiger 1050.  Then I rode back home across the Cascade Mountains, seventy miles to my house in Klamath Falls.  I was cold, but I had on good gear and the roads were clear.

The next week I saw on Craig’s List a 2007 Tiger 1050 at Hansen’s for $8,200.  It was the only Tiger I could find listed in the region, so I thought I’d go over and take a look.  I took my checkbook just in case.

There was snow in the passes by now, so I loaded up my riding gear in my truck last Saturday and drove over.  After an hour talking to the Hansen people and taking the bike for a brief test ride, I bought it for $7,900.

I got a good price: the bike has 24,000 miles and is in exceptional condition.  It has hard bags, a custom Meyer saddle, heated grips, and Triumph tank and trunk bags.  Non-ABS, which was a demerit, but I loved the bike.  It’s general set-up is about the same as my V-Strom, but it has an engine that just rips and an exhaust note that makes the bike worthy of its name. It''s way fast.

About 4pm I started thinking about riding it home, and Craig said, “You want to take it home today?”

Well, yeah!

I’d accidently brought my summer gloves, so Craig loaned me a pair of winter ones.  I had no way to plug in my electric vest so he installed a BMW accessory plug on the Tiger.  I was wearing light-weight socks but I had some toe-warmers, which I put into my boots.  Then I was off on the exhilarating but coldest ride I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some very cold rides over the years.

I crossed the Siskiyou Mountains and headed south towards Mount Shasta, a much longer ride home but over lower passes.  It was almost dark and the temperature was just above freezing.  I was riding faster than traffic at about eighty-five, but I wanted to get home as fast as possible.  Up to now I was cold in certain places but overall comfortable.

Once I got across the mountains, I turned towards home and rode up the east side of the Cascades.  The temperature had dropped to below freezing, and I could tell my core temperature was starting to struggle to keep up.  Since this is a good road, mostly straight and wide with little traffic, I was now riding at over 100 mph in the dark.  I did see one deer but figured hitting a deer at 100 couldn’t be much different that hitting a deer at sixty-five, the legal speed limit.  I just wanted to get home.  I took my chances with the deer and the cops and was lucky.

I rode in after three hours on the road and headed up for a hot bath.  Despite the cold introduction, I love the bike, although it has a few issues to sort out.  Part of the fun of starting out on a new bike again is getting it set up just the way I want it.

This now brings me full circle.  My first grown-up bike was a ’67 Triumph 650, and after a dozen or so other bikes over the  years, I’m now back on a Tiger.

Triumph is now a completely different company as the old Triumph went out of business in the 70s but was  resurrected in 1984 by John Bloor, who bought the name and the old plant in Hinckley, England, which he gutted and refit with modern manufacturing equipment.  Today, Triumphs are very competitive with Japanese bikes and completely modern.  They make a line of retro-styled vertical twin models, including the much-revered Bonneville, but also make a range of modern sport bikes like my Tiger, an inline triple that is designed for touring but will almost hold its own against the fastest and best handling sport bikes out there.  It’s a lot more comfortable than a full-on sport bike, and it’s plenty fast enough for me, At sixty-three, I didn’t want to end my riding years on a merely practical motorcycle like the V-Strom.  I ride motorcycles in part because they get my blood up.

I know I’m going the enjoy the new Tiger as much as I did that old classic.  And now I’ve got the bike to match my new hat.