Thoughts on Veteran's Day: part of the national story

This morning I was reading an article in The New Yorker about F. Scott Fitzgerald's struggles in Hollywood as the television was showing President Obama in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. Then I listened to the President's Veteran's Day speech, which was given in an amphitheater behind the tomb. Once again Obama delivered a fine piece of work, sensitive and eloquent.

It must be interesting being a speechwriter for this man, considering that the speech he wrote for his Democratic National Convention address in 2004 launched him on his way to the presidency: "the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too." When you write for him, you're writing for someone with good reason to think he can do it better than you.

At the funeral home after Fitzgerald's death in Hollywood in 1940, Dorothy Parker reportedly murmured a line from The Great Gatsby, "The poor son-of-a-bitch." Today, of course, is a day for remembering military veterans, not alchoholic novelists. On the other hand, Fitzgerald enlisted in the Navy during World War I, though the war ended shortly afterward. The President this morning mentioned those veterans with shrapnel and scars who found they could not put the war behind them. He knows something about tormented souls. In his fine memoir, Dreams from My Father, he wrote about his own father's alcoholism. That, of course, was seized upon by his political enemies. There is no neutral zone in politics.

The reason The New Yorker has an article on Fitzgerald 69 years after his death is similar to the reason so many hang upon the words of the President — the heights to which the man rose. Novelist Richard Yates called Gatsby "a miracle of talent ... a triumph of technique." Part of the fascination with Fitzgerald, however, has to do with his miserable end. It's an old story arc: how high they soared, how low they fell.

By contrast, Obama (despite his detractors) is a popular President in his first year in office; his story is not finished. As Peter O'Toole says in Lawrence of Arabia, "Nothing is written" — meaning that each of us writes his own destiny. The President will shortly make a decision on America's effort in Afghanistan, potentially sending tens of thousands of additional men and women into harm's way. However that turns out, the weight of responsibility for such decisions brings the most gifted orator down to earth. However golden the heights he reaches, there will also be the solemn moments at Dover Air Force Base saluting the flag-draped coffins of fallen servicemembers.

In watching this story unfold, we are not mere fans reading a novel or watching a movie. Our own lives are implicated by how it plays out. I for one hope that Obama chooses the minimalist route favored by his vice president, that his lack of experience does not cause him to defer too much to the military brass who favor a maximalist approach. As my friend Barrett says, he needs some brass of his own. I do wish he would have the brass to issue a stop-loss order to end the outrageous discharges that continue under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which harm our military readiness in service of fabricated concerns borne of bias.

Today, most Americans (excepting the Phelps family of Topeka) are united in honoring those who died to defend us. I have participated several times in wreath-laying ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknowns, thanks to the annual Memorial Day efforts by World War II veteran Frank Kameny for GLAA, which he did for a couple of decades. The protocol for the ceremony is the same for a gay rights activist as it is for a President. When you step back after placing the wreath, and stand in silence for the playing of Taps, you stand atop a hill facing the tomb and beyond it the Potomac River and the nation's capital. The solemn stillness of the crowd is quite moving.

The memory of those moments, standing silently with Frank and an honor guard and a few other colleagues in Arlington, reinforces my conviction in our cause. Gay people have served in every American conflict since von Steuben drew up the nation's first code of military justice. We are part of the national story. Ending the shameful policy that forces gay warriors either to leave or to serve in silence is one way this President can make his contribution to history. Rise to the challenge, Mr. President. It should be a much easier call than what to do in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.