Last night, I drove two and a half hours out to Fort Riley, somewhere between Manhattan and Salina, Kansas—an empty expanse of prairie grass and gentle hills; Dorothy’s farm, if you will.  Kansas is psychological territory—when you drive across it at night, it gives you nightmares.  You can scream and not be heard; then the mind starts to scream out. Drive across Kansas and you begin to imagine Oz.  The “Portal to Hell” is just a few miles outside of Kansas, a haunted church so notorious the Pope asked not to fly over Kansas on his visit ten years ago.  This was the place of the Clutter murders of In Cold Blood.  Dodge City.  You tread carefully in Kansas.

I went because a guy I know had just been called to Iraq from the Kansas National Guard.  He's 42 years old, been in training for three whole weeks, and they're just shipping him off to Iraq.  He signed up for the Guard in his middle thirties, like many of his unit-mates did, to do the things the National Guard usually do—disaster relief, etc.  He felt he could handle one weekend a month, two weeks out of the year.  He signed up because he needed money to go back to school as a non-traditional student.  Now he's headed to Iraq for two years, held past his term of service, which was supposed to expire two days ago.  And he's about the median age of the men and women in his unit.  This is the backdoor draft John Kerry talks about.  I saw it firsthand.

At the rally, I listened to the Commander in Chief of the Kansas Guard, Governor Kathleen Sebelius, give a great speech about the old story in which three men are asked what they're doing:  The first says "laying bricks," the second says, "building a wall," the third says "building a castle."  Governor Sebelius is a Democrat, believe it or not, in one of the five most Republican states in the Nation.  She never had to take a position on the war, and Kansas' lone Democratic congressman, Dennis Moore, voted for it.  No matter what you say about that vote one way or the other, they both sure as hell have fought to improve conditions for the families at home and for benefits for Kansas troops abroad.  Sebelius has increased funding for families at home, and Dennis Moore sponsored a bill to pay for troops’ travel expenses home.  That’s what matters most now.    

Some on both sides might call this flip-floppery, but Saturday night convinced me of one thing beyond all else:  It's possible to love the soldiers but hate Bush's decision to take us to war.  It’s our responsibility to see this thing through to the end, to win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to take care of the people called to this war in whatever ways we can.  And for nobodys like us, you just do what you can in the small ways that make a difference.  Governor Sebelius and Congressman Moore will do all they can, just as their Republican colleagues will—and that means being fiscally responsible in how we distribute funds, too.  Fighting Halliburton is not hating America.  Voting against porked-up military spending bills is not depriving soldiers of body armor.  Just like the soldiers, America only has so many resources, and we have to take care of what we have.  And that means not spending more money on missile defense and nuclear bombs while the Kansas National Guard is underpaid and underequipped.     

As I stood there in the cavernous hanger of Fort Riley, watching the middle aged men and women of the Kansas National Guard stand at attention, preparing to leave for Iraq for two years, I became greatly conflicted.  Rarely have I ever felt more allegiance to that flag that hung behind those men and women, and yet, I felt angrier about this war than I ever had before.  I can’t believe Bush is virtually conscripting the National Guard into this war they didn’t sign up for and aren’t equipped for.  As Governor Sebelius told us, the cliché is true:  We have to support those building that cathedral of a democratic Iraq.  The argument has to be about how we get that done, because there’s no coming home now.  At least, for the last regiment of the Kansas National Guard, for another two years.  For now, I’m voting for John Kerry and just trying to help out the troops I know who have left families and homes behind.  That’s the difference between us and them, by which I mean Democrats and Republicans.  They are about ideals, and we’re about people.  The Republicans committed us to this ideal, and now it’s the Democrats’ turn to worry about the people getting it done.