The question I most want to ask

To the Presidential candidates:

What executive powers will you relinquish on your first day in office? And how, precisely, will you go about relinquishing them?

The abandonment of habeas corpus and related rights is to me one of the most horrific and shameful developments in American history. Restoring those critical rights may be the single most important issue for our new president. That’s why I was heartened to see this endorsement from Habeas Lawyers for Obama:

When others stood back, Senator Obama helped lead the fight in the Senate against the Administration’s efforts in the Fall of 2006 to strip the courts of jurisdiction, and when we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration’s bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us. Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo.

It’s not perfect, and who knows whether Obama will even be the nominee, much less our next president. But that’s the kind of executive power I’d like to see.

Travel back in time…

…to 1962, when even happy couples could not ensure that the size of their family would not exceed the time, energy, money, and care that they could provide.

This Planned Parenthood comic is emotional and vivid. It illustrates just how frightening and capricious the world could seem for people without access to or knowledge of reliable birth control.

Every child a loved and wanted child. It’s still the right goal.

(Via.)

If I should die…

One of the clearest and best military bloggers I’ve read during this war is Andrew Olmsted. A true citizen-soldier, Andrew’s beliefs and actions came from deep conviction and careful thought. He did not take lightly his decision to volunteer for active service, and he knew he would almost certainly be sent to Iraq.

He was killed there two days ago.

I still can’t believe how shocked and saddened I am. This is the way of war: People die. Thousands and tens of thousands of them, but each one makes it new again. I am a stranger who simply admired his writing; I can’t imagine the pain and grief his family must feel.

Andy left a blog post to be published in the event of his death. It’s typical Andy: Blunt, funny, geeky, and opinionated. You gotta love a man who can quote Wedding Crashers, The Princess Bride, and Babylon 5 in his self-obituary.

It must be an amazingly strange thing to write your farewell letter. Andy’s ranged from the personal to the worldly, with time for jokes and admonitions:

But on a larger scale, for those who knew me well enough to be saddened by my death, especially for those who haven’t known anyone else lost to this war, perhaps my death can serve as a small reminder of the costs of war.

Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences in lieu of a cold discussion of theoretical merits of war and peace. Now I’m facing some very real consequences of that decision; who says life doesn’t have a sense of humor?

But for those who knew me and feel this pain, I think it’s a good thing to realize that this pain has been felt by thousands and thousands (probably millions, actually) of other people all over the world. That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified. If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision.

This may be a contradiction of my above call to keep politics out of my death, but I hope not. Sometimes going to war is the right idea. I think we’ve drawn that line too far in the direction of war rather than peace, but I’m a soldier and I know that sometimes you have to fight if you’re to hold onto what you hold dear.

But in making that decision, I believe we understate the costs of war; when we make the decision to fight, we make the decision to kill, and that means lives and families destroyed. Mine now falls into that category; the next time the question of war or peace comes up, if you knew me at least you can understand a bit more just what it is you’re deciding to do, and whether or not those costs are worth it.