There's an article in the Post this morning about Midwesterners changing their minds about Bush and the war in Iraq as time goes by, and they see the dead bodies of their boys coming home. That's the point, exactly. It is so easy to think "I'm a patriot!" and "Let's go kick some Arab ass!" when you don't fully appreciate the price that's being paid, and the lack of any good reason for doing so. But once boys who are close to you, however indirectly, start dying for that questionable cause, it makes you think. I was in the United States Infantry. Fortunately, it was peacetime. I was there in Germany practicing war games along the Czech border in case the Russians came across. I didn't have to think much about that. If we were attacked, and our allies, the Germans, were attacked, we'd fight to help protect them, and ultimately, us. But there were a couple of times when I was there when the tensions were high in the Middle East. First, we were there in the wake of the Marines being bombed in Beirut, Lebanon. There was always the chance that President Reagan and his administration would want to retaliate with an invasion. And then came the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the terrorist attack on Pan Am 103 that went down in Lockerbie, Scotland. It was at that time that I had my deepest concerns about being brought into a full scale war in the Middle East. The entire nebulous cause of defending Israeli interests, and the possibility of dying for them, began to bother me. It's one thing to serve your country for clear-cut interests, and another to give up your life for nebulous causes. Now that I have children who are in their teens, I feel even more strongly against questionable military actions. It's one thing to give my own life to a questionable cause. It's another to see my children's lives sacrificed for nebulous political causes.
The war in Iraq is awash in the lies of a president and an administration whose only real concerns are the protection of big business in the United States. He said that we had to attack Iraq because of their connections with Al Qaeda, and because of the development of WMD that were going to be given to terrorists. It was all lies, we now know, because even our intelligence community said this wasn't true to the president, even as he was saying it. Even now, the president wants to say we're fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. But this is clearly not true. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are dead, in jail, or holed up in Pakistan, protected by a supposed "ally" president who's collected millions of dollars from us to do nothing but protect his own regime. The resistance in Iraq is mostly homegrown, with loose connections--if any--to the organization that planned and carried out the terrorist attack on 9/11. The Sunni population that once saw their own running the country and oppressing the Kurds and Shiites, now face being on the end of oppression by the Shiite majority in Iraq. They are resisting the U.S. presence in Iraq, as are the Shiites for that matter, and they are engaged in a civil war. Would U.S. citizens resist an occupation army? You bet we would. Who can blame them? They want us out. I wouldn't want to go to Iraq and die under those circumstances. I don't want my children going to Iraq to die under those circumstances. I don't want your children going to Iraq to die under those circumstances. I don't know why we're there. I don't know why we're staying. Some would say it's because of the control of the oil fields. Some would say that it's because we want political stability in the Middle East, both to protect Israel, and to make the business climate more comfortable for international commerce. But whatever the case may be, I don't see a good reason for one more of our children dying in that far-off desert land. Bring them home! Bring them home! And enough with this lying president who hides behind executive privilege while he destroys our constitution, and breaks international law--all in the name of protecting his administration. That's the way thugs work. That's the way every totalitarian regime has worked. Bush thinks he's above the law. And we have to have an answer for that.
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