TWO ROADS diverged in a war last week. And with apologies to Robert Frost, I’m not fond of treading either one of them.
We’ve walked the first road for a long time. That’s the one labeled “Stay the course,” the now-discarded phrase that symbolized a resolution bordering on mule-headedness. Keep walking straight ahead, it advised, regardless of where the path may lead. Any questioning, any doubts about the course, can only be a sign of the dreaded “flip-flopping” that leads to disaster.
I’ve hated the term “flip-flopper” for a long time. I always felt it was too glib an answer, an easy way of smearing one’s opponents without having to answer your own charges.
That was before I saw road number two.
Congress gave us that road just recently. Fed up with the war in Iraq and done (for the moment) with non-binding resolutions about it, the Democrats in Congress finally put together a measure with real teeth. We’ll pay for this war, they told President Bush, but only if our troops return home by sometime next year.
Bush refused and threatened a veto. A showdown seemed inevitable ... or would have, except that the Democrats immediately backed down. OK, we’ll pay for it, they said. But we’d better see some progress or we might have to make threats again!
Flip. Flop.
Please understand, I’m not against ending the war or calling the troops home. For that matter, if someone can show a way that we can still bring order out of the chaos and victory out of despair, I will embrace him and call him brother.
But what I am against is having to choose between the extremes of mindless resolution and spineless indecisiveness. That just leaves us stuck between a rock and a soft place.
For many years, I have enjoyed the fantasy novels of Stephen R. Donaldson, particularly his “Thomas Covenant” series. In that series, one of the supporting characters has a habit of swearing “By Stone and Sea!”, a reflection of his ideas of the Eternal. Stone, you see, represents eternity at rest, while the sea is eternity in motion.
I like that image. I like it a lot. But like so many fine images, the virtues they represent are all too easily distorted when taken to extremes.
Resolution and consistency are admirable qualities. One thinks of Abraham Lincoln’s determination to save the Union by any means, or Winston Churchill’s willingness to fight on the beaches, the fields and the streets themselves rather than give in to Adolf Hitler.
But resolution, as a virtue, depends on the aim. A man who marches straight ahead until he falls off a cliff is certainly consistent, but perhaps not admirable. Hitler had a resolution of his own, but not one that any of us, I hope, would want to imitate.
Flexibility and adaptability have their own virtues. Franklin Roosevelt essentially improvised a solution to the Great Depression, keeping what worked and discarding what didn’t. Benjamin Franklin, a consummate diplomat and politician, was always cutting bargains and striking deals in the service of his country’s good.
But that’s the key — both men had a goal. Flexibility needs a fixed point to tie itself to. If those aims are absent — or worse, surrendered — the adaptable man is left spinning in the wind, at the mercy of every breeze that comes along.
Both qualities have to work together. The firm vision needs awareness, the flexible mind needs a destination. But that requires a level of compromise that hasn’t been seen among our leaders in Washington for a while.
I hope they find it soon.
Two roads diverged in a war, and I, I looked for a third untraveled by. For that could make all the difference.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.