VA symbolism

The choice of retired general Eric Shinseki to head the Veterans Administration should occupy several news cycles’ worth of commentary about the meaning of Obama’s choices. Shinseki was the dissident general whose excessive truth-telling during the heady days of the original conquest of Iraq led to his public shaming and unceremonious dismissal by the military geniuses Rumsfeld, Feith and Wolfowitz.

Shinseki now gets to shoulder the unenviable task of caring for the tens of thousands of wounded and traumatized vets whose suffering has been kept off the radar by Karl Rove and his disciples, those political geniuses of whom we were all supposed to be in such awe. It will be interesting to see what the incoming team does about the nitty-gritty issues of veterans’ lives and how the long-standing identification of the military with conservative and Republican politics dating from the Vietnam-era culture wars might be affected by an improved performance from an Obama administration.

In any case it is brilliant symbolism to reach back into the sorry history of the last eight years and rehabilitate someone who really did put ‘Country First’.