The Heartbreaking Siege of Our Capitol

I lived on Capitol Hill for quite some time with a wonderful woman and an “enthusiastic” black cat. We moved to three different apartments over the years, but each was in spitting distance from the United States Capitol, if you were a good spitter. We often walked across the east front lawn; this was years before 9/11 and no one harbored thoughts of an attack from any source. Couples often picnicked there, and college students read, or at least pretended to. The building itself is large and impressive, as much for what it represents as for its striking neoclassical architecture, inspired by the great buildings of ancient Rome and Athens.

I had my own personal love of the Capitol. Instead of foisting lifeless textbooks on them, I took my students from three classes of American Government at a high school in D.C. to the great laboratories of government, including our Capitol. Years later, leading a State Department protective detail, I escorted a foreign ambassador to the Capitol’s West Front for the dignified and peaceful inauguration of President George H. W. Bush. As the Ambassador and I strolled through the building, we were suddenly greeted by incoming Secretary of State James Baker, who shook my hand and to whom I offered a “Semper Fi,” knowing he was a fellow Marine. I could not have been prouder to be an American.

The Capitol always created in me a hush of sorts, much like what I felt as an altar boy in the sacristy of my church back in Ohio, just before mass. And I always felt a twinge of awe at night when the light in the Tholos, a temple-like structure atop the Capitol dome, was illuminated, telling the free world that even after sunset, the U.S. Congress was in session—democracy in action. And as a former Marine who'd lived in places across oceans and seas, including Lebanon during a brutally violent civil war, I knew that my country was truly the beacon of hope for the world.

I am grieved that a sacred place has been irretrievably violated. The last time that happened was more than 200 years ago, when we were at war with our British cousins. Yesterday, astonishingly, the citadel of democracy was stormed and defiled not by a foreign enemy, but by an angry, lawless, insurrectionist mob of Americans, who ironically purport to stand for law and order, and claim to have the highest respect for law enforcement officers. All evidence to the contrary.

I will never be able to erase from memory the image of one insurrectionist traitor beating a police officer with an American flag. My heart always told me this would never happen here. My eyes now tell me, tragically, otherwise.

God bless and help the United States of America.