In the spring of 2003, I was one of two White House correspondents for National Journal, the authoritative nonpartisan magazine then located on 15th Street in Washington, D.C. The capital city was on a war footing and had been for months as the Iraq invasion became imminent. On March 19, it became a reality. That night, at quarter past 10, George W. Bush spoke from the Oval Office.
"My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger," the commander in chief said somberly.
"To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you," Bush added. "That trust is well placed."
It was indeed well placed: By April 9, Iraq's army was in tatters and Saddam Hussein's regime had collapsed. But think of the burden a U.S. president had placed on our men and women in uniform. The peace of a troubled world. The hopes of oppressed peoples. A task that sweeping wasn't going to come without casualties.
One of those Americans President Bush was talking about was 25-year-old Brian McPhillips, a 1st lieutenant in the 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd U.S. Marines. The Cannon and McPhillips families are close. I'd known Brian as a boy. When his family had come to Washington from their home in Massachusetts, I'd accompanied young Brian and his father David, a U.S. Army veteran who saw action in Vietnam, to a various local monuments and a Civil War battlefield.
Only the good Lord knows what Brian could have accomplished had he lived, but all the signs indicated that it would have been a great deal. In high school, he was a member of the Key Society and a founder of the Irish Culture Club. As a finance major at Providence College, Brian turned his senior project into a thriving business selling military surplus uniforms and other gear.
"He ran the business right out of his room," Professor Paul Maloney recalled later. "He actually made a little money doing it. He definitely got an A."
U.S. Marines are taught to "lead from the front," and that was Brian McPhillips' way. In one sense, it's the ethos of the modern U.S. military writ large. What I mean by that is that the U.S. military today is an all-volunteer force and has been for decades. Brian didn't have to enlist in the Marine Corps; most Providence alums (or the graduates of any college) certainly don't. Nor did the men in Brian's unit -- or any of the men and women serving today.
"He didn't have to make this choice," noted Bob Christie, the McPhillipses' next-door-neighbor in Pembroke. "He was the picture of a quiet leader, very modest."
That description fit Michael Kelly, too. Michael, a dear friend and onetime colleague of mine, wasn't a member of the armed forces. He was a journalist -- the very best of our generation, in my view -- covering the war while embedded with the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division. Michael had covered the first Gulf War and believed the United States had erred in leaving Saddam Hussein in power, a mistake that he saw as both a moral failing and a strategic blunder.
So when he volunteered to cover the second Iraq war, Michael was putting his money where his mouth was, in the old parlance. Michael died the same day as Brian, April 4, 2003, while riding in a military vehicle on the outskirts of Baghdad with a staff sergeant named Wilbert Davis. Both Kelly and Davis had wives, small children, siblings, and parents who loved them.
Upon hearing this news, I cut short a trip to California and returned to Washington. Early on the morning of April 8, 2003, I went to St. Matthew Cathedral on M Street in Washington to say a prayer for the Kelly family. I also lit a candle for Brian McPhillips. Then I went back to National Journal to continue writing Mike Kelly's obituary.
At noon, as she did almost every day, Department of Defense spokeswoman Victoria Clarke briefed the press. Among her duties was reciting the names of the U.S. service personnel who had lost their lives in the line of duty. It must have been a difficult task for Victoria; I know it was difficult to strain toward the television listening for a name you were hoping not to hear. But that day I did hear it: "1st Lt. Brian M. McPhillips of Pembroke, Massachusetts."
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men," we are told. This adage is meant to be ironic -- that cemeteries are full of men who erroneously believed themselves indispensable. But it's wrong.
Most human beings lost to war or violence can never be replaced. Not only do their families miss them terribly, but they also leave an unfillable, if invisible, hole in society. We never know what they would have said and done, who they would have touched, what they'd have written and created, or the happiness they would have brought to the world. They were indispensable.
Like Brian McPhillips, Michael Kelly was a natural leader, though not necessarily a quiet one. Besides leaving behind a wife and two young boys who talked and walked and looked like their dad, Mike left behind a cohort of colleagues who admired him and laughed with him -- and often argued with him.
Professionally, in my view, he was literally irreplaceable. Some of us friends of Michael Kelly's were ruminating only last night on what he would have made of our current politics and how deliciously he would have skewered today's blustering politicians. Mike was an equal opportunity skewer, too. I imagine he would have enjoyed dissecting Alvin Bragg's imaginative, destructive legal machinations. He certainly would have ridiculed Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to turn his own indictment into a fundraising scheme.
(I was thinking only yesterday how Mike once described another businessman-turned-politician: "Ross Perot made his way onto the national stage, barking like a dog and occasionally biting off small pieces of himself.")
I'll leave you this morning with Maureen Dowd's vivid recollection of Kelly interviewing then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. Accompanied to his hotel room by campaign aides at the appointed time, Michael found the good reverend still asleep. I'll let the great New York Times columnist take it from there.
An aide ushered a surprised Michael into the darkened bedroom. Michael had some sensitive questions to ask. He wanted to grill Jackson about conflicting stories about when Jesse got Martin Luther King Jr.'s blood on his shirt after the assassination. So Michael did not want to scream his questions from across the room. He tried talking to Jackson from the end of the bed, but the sleepy candidate was mumbling his answers into his pillow. Michael had to draw closer and closer to the bed so he could hear, finally perching on the end of the bed to take notes. But he still could not catch everything Jackson was saying. "So I lay down right next to him, with my head on the pillow next to his head on the pillow," Michael recalled. "And that's how we did the interview." Michael would do anything to get a story.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
