Waiting to Unpack

Enough time has passed, enough people have died--the right people, anyway--that I can begin to let go of some of this shit I have been carrying around all these years.

I remember hearing somewhere--TV probably--about a guy who said he got up every morning and the first thing he did was read the obituaries just to make sure his name wasn't listed.  Any day that you're not in the obits is a good day.

I read the same pages, but for different reasons:  I'm looking for other names, names of people who could hurt me.  They could hurt me because what I know could hurt them.

When I first went in, they had me take a lot of tests and sign a lot of papers.  I promised to be faithful, trustworthy and brave, to keep the law of the Wolf Cub pack, or whatever its equivalent for my line of work.  I promised never to tell my story under penalty of fines and imprisonment.

At the time, it seemed fair enough.  We were engaged with enemies both foreign and domestic and I was ready to do my part to keep the country safe.  Whatever it took and wherever it took me.

That was then....

Nowadays, the contestant agreement on Survivor is more binding.

It's a different world, a greyer world and the country I promised to defend is getting harder and harder to recognize.

My country right or wrong is a lovely sentiment:  primo Hallmark stuff.  But when it's more wrong than right?

People should know what's being done in their name.

Writing sentences like that make we want to look over my shoulder.  Nothing new about that:  I've been looking over my shoulder my whole life.

What's different is how quickly we have learned to adopt the principles and practices of those countries that we used to criticize.

I can remember watching the commie fear films that were so popular in the fifties and sixties.  They would point to things like national identity cards and robust domestic intelligence as hallmarks of the fascist state.  Not so funny after we have been living under these same systems, or their analogs, for the last decade.

Is that the same country I promised to defend?

The sad thing is that there is no going back, no way for the pendulum to find its natural center.  This is the new normal and we had better get used to it, or we will have some 'splaining to do.

As one of my acquaintances from the old days told me after too many Jager Bombs, "Rendition:  it's not just for combatants anymore."

I know from experience how much a difference it makes when you interrogate a suspect offshore and anyone who has ever done anything on a vacation that they would never do at home knows exactly what I am talking about.

It would have been easy to fall into the predetermined role of "disgruntled ex-spy," to drink myself into the early grave that claimed so many of the people I used to work with, but I spent a lot of time steering clear of easy choices.

I am not so stupid as to think that I will be received with open arms.  I will immediately be labeled as a quack, a nut-job and another brick in the wall of conspiracy theorists that "protect" large subsets of the population.  

That's a stratagem right out of the playbook I helped to write:  shoot the messenger.  But having shot one or two messengers of my own, I can tell you that there is nothing either satisfying or definitive about it.

I can't be concerned about how I will be received.  I have bigger fish to fry.  I would like to be able to sleep through the night like I did before I took up this work. To sleep the Sleep of the Just just once more before I take that big sleep is, as they say, a "consummation devoutly to be wished."

I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see something I can be proud of and know that the price I have been asked to pay has been worth it.