Politics And Wars

In over 40 years of covering politics, only once have I been present when someone announced they would run for President.

It was after midnight, in a small meeting room, at the end of the GOP national convention years ago. I was News Director for a small TV station in Fort Wayne, but our progressive company (owned as it happened by "Jock" Whitney, a prominent Republican, and brother-in-law of the president of CBS) sent a news team to both parties' national convention.  Our job was not to cover the race for President---we left that to CBS---but how our local delegates were taking it all in.

As it happened the best known member of our delegation was the mayor of Indianapolis, Richard Lugar---also known as "Nixon's favorite mayor."  Lugar had made a name for himself running Indianapolis well, and for his progressive views. He had been mentioned as a possible veep running mate, but that didn't happen. With Nixon safely nominated, the weary delegates---and reporters--were back at the delegation hotel ready for bed or booze, when word spread Lugar was holding an unusual midnight news conference in a hotel meeting room. My photographer and I raced there, and set up for whatever was to happen. Lugar came in, went to the podium and to our amazement told us that when Nixon's term was over, it was his intention to run for President. Til then he would continue  as Mayor, but start building a national base for his expected run. He just wanted his fellow  Hoosiers to know what his plans were. 


That was my introduction to Richard Lugar, who did run for President later, and got nowhere. Then he ran for the US Senate, won, and began a 36 year term, becoming one of its ablest members, an acknowledged expert on foreign affairs (this from a sometime isolationist state,) who didn't hesitate to "reach across the aisle" to another able Hoosier expert on foreign affairs, Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, and later Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. Together they crafted some of the best, bi-partisan foreign policy laws in recent history. (The Nunn-Lugar approach to trying to find and control rogue atomic weapons is still basic US policy, if not exactly front burner in the current GOP administration.)

After 6 terms, Sen. Lugar lost, surprisingly in a primary battle to a Tea Party Republican who in turn lost to a moderate Democrat.  Senator Lugar died last week, honored by those who knew him from both parties and who honored his work for his country, above his party. He was one of the finest statesmen I have known and covered, a younger man in the mold of John Sherman Cooper.

We, (and by we I mean) America needs more public officials such as Richard Lugar, who worked to keep America out of wars, we seem to so casually enter today, all then while ignoring the Constitution.   



And speaking of war, and its often hidden costs, many which only pop up years late:.
A UN report has already told us we (US and allies) killed more civilians in the last few years of fighting in Afghanistan than enemy combatants, and the same holds true of our proxy allies in Yemen--more innocents, especially children, have died in "coalition" bombing than fighters. (Pres. Trump just vetoed a bill to get us out of Yemen, one of the very few times recently Congress has stood up to the President--and for the Constitution---a veto which will probably hold, unfortunately.)

And, remember Raqqa--the Northern Syria town that was IS headquarters? An independent study reports more than 1600 civilians were killed in the US-led coalition's months of bombing that finally "liberated" that city.


As to other, often hidden costs, one more good Kentucky boy is home, finally identified following his death at Pearl Harbor, and on the West Coast, a much younger veteran, suffering from what we once called "shell shock" drove his car into a group of people waiting at a bus stop, under the delusion they were IS-type supporters from his not-so-long-ago combat.


Dick Lugar probably wouldn't have had any answers for that one, but I know he would have tried.


I'm just sayin'...