From NPR's All Things Considered: April 23, 2009

The segment begins, "Thirty-eight years ago this week . . ."

Senator John Kerry this week chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same committee he once stood before, voicing his opposition to military action in Vietnam. A different war, a different time, a remarkable juxtaposition. History, or perhaps our desire to see patterns and construct narratives, certainly lends itself to poetics.

In hearing the excerpted testimony of the Afghan war veterans, I was most affected by the testimony and perspective of Ret. Army Capt. Wesley Moore:

"We are under-funded and under-manned in Afghanistan. [. . .] We have fought this war on the cheap, and I say that not only on the military side, but particularly on the civilian support side and the reconstruction side” (1:46).

Put simply, I am continually humbled by reminders that domestic perceptions—public opinion—and support for our military personnel matters to those serving. It is a small but significant revelation I’ve seen not just here, in Capt. Moore’s testimony, but in reading veterans’ memoirs and accounts of combat and in talking with veterans. It is one thing to say “support our troops”; it is quite another to understand what that means to active duty servicemen and women.

Capt. Moore also notes that our forces are dealing with

“insurgents who were not Taliban for cause, but Taliban for hire”(2:24),

offering, to my mind, more than sufficient justification for President Obama’s decision to commit more troops and funds to the cause in Afghanistan.

Opinions on the war aside, with this particular moment—this senate hearing—I am struck, once again, by the way historic moments often transpire quietly, simply, in footnotes to the events that demand the national—or international—stage and capture our collective attention. I am also reminded, here, of Chekhov's lines from "The Student":

"'The past [. . .] is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered."

It is a moment worthy of attention.