lifeonq.com

What George Bush Doesn’t Know About Brian Muller

George Bush doesn’t know Brian Muller, but Brian knows George, rather intimately. Brian has been to Bush’s Crawford, Texas house many times when George wasn’t around. Brian searched everything that entered the ranch, from food to packages. Following the President outside the ranch, which is of course always guarded, Brian made sure that anywhere George went was safe. He looked behind artwork in restaurants. He examined the pews at church. He touched all the chairs and telephones and files in conference rooms.

If the President knew about Brian, he would likely be alarmed to know that he had been watched so closely, because Brian is a gay man. As a soldier who wasn’t asked, and didn’t tell—at least until the end—Brian kept his orientation under wraps while he went about his mission to uncover any dangers in Crawford, so that George could safely continue his reign of discrimination and exclusion, using his power to deny gay Americans basic rights at every opportunity.

Brian served in secrecy in the U.S. Army for eight years. Before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell put an end to his military service, he put his life on the line every day as a bomb technician. He went to Bosnia three times. He was in one of the early waves of soldiers who went into Afghanistan in the late fall of 2001, just a couple of months following the tragedy on September 11. In Afghanistan, Brian’s unit searched for old Soviet munitions that had been left behind after Russia’s war effort there. What they found they destroyed, to prevent the bombs and chemicals and guns from ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists. They hiked high into the Afghan mountains and went into the infamous caves. More than once, they would evacuate small villages and destroy a cave full of unexploded shells.

In Afghanistan, Brian risked his life for his fellow soldiers and for ordinary Afghanis, even though it was often hard to tell which locals were innocent civilians and which were plotting against America. When a young Afghani boy rode a bicycle up to a group of soldiers, got off and walked away, Brian was the one who rushed to the bike and diffused the IED, at risk to his own life and limb, saving his fellow soldiers from becoming another on the Pentagon’s list of Americans killed in service to their country.

Among the lethal remnants the Soviets left behind were tanks of fuel air explosive. The Americans came in to remove the tanks, hoping to prevent the locals from killing themselves out of ignorance of the volatile nature of the high explosive liquid rounds in the tanks. The Afghanis would excavate high explosives out of abandoned, unexploded bombs to heat their homes and cook their families’ meals.

While loading the tanks on military transport, one tipped and spilled the explosive on Brian. He still fights a skin condition that resulted from the accident, five years after being kicked out of the Army for being gay. He struggled to get treatment from the VA. Apparently Brian’s injury was less deserving of healthcare because his skin is stretched across a gay man’s body.

After his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Brian was assigned to the Presidential detail with the Secret Service back in the states. His job was to clear deliveries to the Crawford estate and secure other locations of any danger before the President could enter. The technique for ensuring an area is safe for our leaders is alarmingly simple. It’s called “find or function.” Soldiers and agents touch and move everything. Any hidden explosives are either noticed and diffused, or they are touched and detonated. Anything Brian examined would either be deemed harmless or could be the last thing Brian touched before dying for a man who does not value Brian’s service.

Brian provided the same service to Vice President Cheney, traveling with him overseas to protect him in airport hangers, at press conferences and during speeches. Mr. Cheney doesn’t know that one young gay man risked his life to protect him, even though Cheney believes it’s okay for his daughter to be gay, but sits by passively as his party works to ensure that it’s not okay for the sons and daughters of other Americans to enjoy the same tolerance.

By the end of 2003, just a few months after his service in Afghanistan, Brian became the focus of a little too much of the wrong kind of attention from his fellow soldiers and his commanders. Despite the perception that gays in our military are discharged after some sort of “display” of homosexual behavior, the reality is that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is often used as a tool of personal vendetta, or out of competition for promotion or plumb assignments. It’s an excuse to discriminate, and it’s regularly used as such. In Brian’s case, internal unit politics caused some soldiers to threaten to Tell in an effort to divert attention from their own conduct unbecoming. In order to avoid the hassle and humiliation of a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell proceeding, Brian voluntarily told his commander that he is gay. His military career was over.

I met Brian when he moved to Atlanta after his discharge from the Army. He was out of work for a long time. He sold cars. He worked on 2004 political campaigns for little or no income. He served state legislators under the Georgia capitol’s gold dome, fighting Georgia’s anti-gay marriage amendment, which ultimately passed and was added to our state constitution. He checked luggage at the airport for near minimum wage for the Transportation Security Administration—all a shameful underuse of his training and skill.

Finally, he secured a job for a private firm under contract with the federal government in Washington D.C., where his expertise protecting soldiers, civil servants and ordinary citizens from IEDs and other threats of terrorism could again be of service. Another former solder who served with Brian in Afghanistan told him about the opportunity—a straight soldier who know Brian was gay, but didn’t care. Skill and service actually matter more than sexual orientation to many in our military, despite the Pentagon’s insistence that gay people are a threat to our troops.

Ironically, being gay is also not a problem for many of the civilian contractors working for our government, or even for many departments within our government, even under an intolerant Republican administration. After a year as a contract employee, Brian landed a job with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He’s still protecting us from improvised explosive devices, even though he was cast out from the military. It’s just unfortunate that those Americans most in need of protection from IEDs—our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan—are in harm’s way without at least one bomb technician (not to mention the many Arabic translators and other highly trained professionals) who happened to be gay. IEDs aren’t homophobic. IEDs kill, without regard for sexual orientation.

But George Bush isn’t done yet. Not content to just ban gays from serving in the military, now he is threatening to veto the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), hoping to further marginalize gay Americans. This is a man who knows privilege that few Americans experience. George benefited from the power of wealth and family connection to build his private career, ensure admission to an Ivy League school where he excelled in mediocrity, and avoid service in Vietnam. Now he uses his power and privilege to deny others the basic right to work, whether in civilian or military life, just because of who they are.

If only George Bush could see Brian Muller as I see him. Still only in his 20s, Brian has already accomplished more in service to his country than I could muster in a lifetime, and arguably more than either George Bush or Dick Cheney. Their military service is somewhere between questionable and nonexistent. Brian has seen war, and continues to risk his life for people he doesn’t even know—including people who see his life as somehow inferior to theirs, or somehow less deserving of access to all America has to offer.

On this Veteran’s Day, I honor my friend Brian. Even though our President does not.