This afternoon the second of our three waves of Vermont National Guard leaves to train in Louisiana for deployment to Afghanistan.  I almost went down to express my support, but am swamped by moving in with my friend.  Sorry excuse, but working out communication with my new housemate -- when both of us have lived alone for so long -- takes center stage.

Still, I want to express my support in this humble way. 

Suppose you were trying to decide whether the United States was worth reinvestment of significant resources.  You arrive in New York, and set up shop in midtown Manhattan.  Why not?  It has good physicial infrastructure, the elevators even work.  The subway rumbles through easily and taxis can be had, unless it's raining.  Restaurants stand ready to feed you, dry cleaners keep up your clothes, and media access abounds.

After you spend a little time there, you start to notice the wealth of the people at the top of those smooth-running elevators.  They're not in subways or taxis, they're in limos.   They have "people" to pick up their dry-cleaning and send thank you gifts when deals go well.

When deals don't go well, they're out for blood.  You watch them devote their energy to trumping rivals for deals that do nothing for society -- not their employees, their communities, public schools.  Hospitals and universities only get donations that put the donor's name over the door.  Nothing for wellness and preparatory education levels. 

But you are stuck in Midtown, listening all day to those deal-makers and rival-breakers.  After awhile, just to keep up, you quit riding the subway.  So you lose sight of the people trudging to work with exhausted faces.  You don't get out to the Outer Boroughs -- not even up to the poorer parts of the same island -- so you lose sight also of the out-of-work, the kids without after-school activities, the Emergency Rooms for people without health care.

What you see instead are their representatives -- the labor leaders, lobbyists, parent spokespeople, community organizers.  Each of them starts to speak only of the subgroup they know, and they're fighting hard for crumbs that might save the lives of people they know. 

But you don't know those people.  You hear those leaders as more "special interests."  They don't seem fundamentally different from the rival-breakers and deal-makers you already have learned to despise in the skyscraper canyons.

And you have the option of going home.  Back to France, back to Canada, back even to some rich person's paradise in Russia.  Leaving the UN or whatever mechanism for aid you were considering, and heading back to folks you love in lands where you have your hopes and memories.

So you call them all "valleyists" -- people who only love their little valley.  Or "tribalists" -- people who only love their little tribe.  Or "clan leaders" -- people who only love their own extended family.

And who do you leave behind?  Not the rival-breakers and deal-makers.  They still have enough money and media to surf the global ocean of money and technology.  To camp behind gated walls on sparkling beaches.

You leave behind the folks in the emergency rooms, the falling-down schools (and bridges), the disease-producing drywall homes they no longer can afford.

Afghanistan isn't any different from America.  Except that a lot more Afghans -- especially women and children -- are dying of things we now treat in the emergency rooms.  I won't say "the elderly" because they only expect to live to 50.  That means they are dying not OF old age, but IN middle age.

No one deserves this.  Matthew  Hoh is right that military action isn't the whole answer.  But someone has to rein in those tribal exploiters, those clan leaders who make deals with their rivals in order to prey on their subordinates.

No one should live that way.

And they're not living, they're dying.

I don't find that acceptable.

So,, thank you, President Obama, for knowing this is different from Iraq.  Thank you, Peter Galbraith and Matthew Hoh, for saying that "more troops" without political and social support cannot be an answer.

And thank you, Vermont National Guard, for doing your duty.  Because unless we take care of the bullies, we can't share our best with the women, and men, and children, who deserve to quit trying to survive, and join us in the glorious life this millennium has made available.