Lakin's choice

By Richard Kantro

Several words by way of closure re the Lt. Col. Terry Lakin affair. Readers who followed it (see story here) learned that, on the day of his sentencing, he conceded that the Army was the wrong place to make his case, and that he would like to be reinstated, and would deploy if ordered to do so.

One might view this outcome as a defeat of the brave actor who originally refused orders which he contended derived from a commander-in-chief of extremely questionable provenance. Lakin's final posture was, to be sure, ultimately less defiant than some might have wished, given the history of his public defiance and the subsequent confessional quality of the allocution. It seems certain that his alternative would have been to spend years in Leavenworth instead of the six months he got. But his case was already lost, early, when Judge Lind denied him discovery, witnesses, and argument in the early phases of the trial. The point is that this doubtless is not the last well-founded challenge to the dangerous, unconstitutional, and ludicrously insupportable position that no living human being has standing to see Hussein Obama's birth certificate. That position cannot, and ultimately will not, withstand the disinfecting sunlight of a renewed Constitutional dawn.

But given whatever pre-sentencing ... uh ... blandishments the military judge may have "offered" Lakin -- with her hand over the microphone and Lakin's attorney at sidebar, before he was invited to step back -- it may be that in these particular circumstances Lakin's discretion was the better part of his valor. His case received practically no coverage in national media large or small. The New York Times did send someone to the sentencing, albeit only to shriek at him, but from a vulture's perch, and no eagle's aerie. His supporters were outflanked and outgunned by a prosecution determined to offer him no quarter. And after all, he intentionally didn't show up, or deploy. Some may argue in good faith that his reason -- to call attention to a possible criminal at the top of the order-giving pyramid -- is irrelevant to his sentence, and that he should have been prepared to swallow the full dose of his military medicine. Okay, but no matter. Realizing, his military career over, that he had done all he himself could do as one man decrying the peril confronting the country -- of a possibly illegitimate commander-in-chief -- he took the deal.

In this writer's opinion, that resolution does not detract from the courage with which Lt. Col. Lakin acted in bringing to the nation's attention -- wan as it was until the moment of his conviction -- the rot at the top of the executive branch, from which all lower orders ultimately derive their legitimacy. As a surgeon, Lt. Col. Lakin knows that a gangrenous condition cannot be left untreated indefinitely. Our government, reeling under Caesar Obama, is fevered, and sick. Lt. Col. Dr. Lakin has identified the sepsis, prepped the patient for surgery, and done his part. And now it's time for the larger surgical team -- Senatus Populusque Americanus -- to get to work.