Three Years of War in Iraq

The use of mercernaries in the guise of Halliburton/Kellog, Brown & Root, et al., has not only revealed an open & shameless corruption which makes war-making & supporting services just another "job-temp" service, but has revealed the desperation of the underemployed & unemployed back home, where 2+ jobs for almost everyone may make for higher dividends & stock prices but lacks all job-satisfaction & security. B&R was a corrupt operation with poor employee treatment when my father worked for them briefly 65 years ago in the days just before WWII, and he could not wait to be able to do differently then. C-span has shown millions of dollars dispensed in cash in brown-paper bags which gives a new dimension to what "off the books" really means, but it factors the deficit higher & yet even higher, "on the cuff" of the future. Forty years ago Nelson Rockefeller proposed that each one [including a family for its children] might underwrite the then national deficit of $3,500 per person, which would be cheaper for everyone in the long run than to let it mount more, but since we have just reached the $25,000 per person level, a family of four taking on another $100K is not longer feasible, given that too many are already sinking on their own, in this 'richest country in the world.' But why would you want to underwrite the waste, the social disintegration, the murder for hire, the spread of disrespect, the dead & the wounded that has been inflicted in the name of 'spreading democracy'? And moreso when the motivation was based on a pack of lies, not a single plan for day 15 & following....and here we are 3 years later in a worse state than before. We have alienated allies, potential allies, the developing world, all the while fueling the millenarianism of the "religious-right" back home with their need for a conflagration in that area to enact a Megiddo of their literalism & "Left Behind" scenarios. When do inmates cease running the asylum?

This illicit action promises to have 'left behind' more trauma & stress-related long-term injuries in our troops than did VietNam & at a time when veterans' services are being cut like every other helping-hand out there. Nor can we expect this batch of walking-wounded & worse to be as complacent as those from before: it just won't be the cabal of the "two week engineers" who will have to face them, and those treatment costs added to the non-accounting costs already & non-budgeted add-ons will strangle the economy like no debt before. And Don Rumsfeld has an op-ed in this morning's paper about learning to apply messages from the Cold War? Give me a break!

When, if ever, we know the TRUE number of Iraqi casualties we have inflicted, someone will have to calculate the hatred flung in our country's direction anew & weekly. While this sinister administration seeks to assault 'choice' as its vice of choice, this WAR OF CHOICE will still be engendering terrorists & terrorism by its callous disregard of reason & evidence.

One of the things that has sustained me and my family over the past three years and, incidently, drew me to the Progressive Christian Movement, was a n address I heard by Jim Wallis to the Thomas Merton Society. It so simply and succinctly described to me what had happened to us in America after 9/11, (much the way your piece does, FP.)

Wallis recounts how empathetic the world was toward the U.S. in the days following 9/11. He mentions the front headline of a Parisian newspaper that read, "We Are All Americans Now." Most Americans would probably not have understood the headline. But Europeans certainly would understand its meaning, that, now, America understands what the rest of the world has known for centuries: We know that we are vulnerable.

Wallis goes on to say that at that moment in time, for the first time, possibly, in her history, the U.S. had a real chance to join the world community. How sad, then, that we elected to shun the world's empathy. How many wonderful things might have come about had America simply taken that step toward maturity, to understand our own vulnerability, to work positively with the rest of the world in spite of our fears? Instead, says Waliis, we believed -- because we wanted to believe -- that Bush could take away our vulnerability, and we were willing to sacrifice anything, including liberty, to have it removed.

Fear of something we hadn't realized we had prior to 9/11, our vulnerability, caused us to act this way. Our belief in bad theology, a fear-based theology, helped sell the war. On the other hand, Wallis notes that one of the most frequent things Christ said to his followers was, "Be not afraid." Does anyone believe that Jesus was naive? That he didn't know about vulnerability? Somehow, I doubt he was naive, but it said over and over, "Be not afraid."

Three years going on a hunderd years the Muslim religion is made of three diferant cults Shiite, Sunni and Kurds the only thing they have in commen is the hate of Americans and Christians they don't get along with each other each one wants too rule. Just like American Christian the Catholics will not surender to Babtist the Latter Day Saints won't join the Holy Rollers if I remember right over 60 differant Chritian Cults and the only thing they agree 100% on is abortion and hatered of gays and Mormman polygamist and deep in the Christian mans heart he would like to join Polygamist. With abortion I could find not one thing aginst it in the whole Bible. On gays it is a sin. If not for the Constitution that they are trying to destroy and the laws the Christian cults would be at war, and they maybe at that, look at the church fires.

In reading this Blog and the comments I am reminded of my youth and my family. I can't, or won't, be as eloquint about this subject as others.
My favorite song when I was in the Youth Choir at St. Francis Church was, "On Ward Christian Solders". You all know how it goes. I wonder how many literal Christians were influnced by this song. I really want to understand my brothers and sisters of faith and trust that most mean well but are misguided.
We have two sons in the military, one who is active Army and spent 13 months in Iraq and may go again and another who is in the reserves who really wanted to go when it all started but felt left behind because he was not needed (he is a combat parimedic). My wife is also a veteran of the Viet Nam days. The other kids and I are pacifist and, as you can guess, we have strif on this issue in our family. I wonder how many other families suffer the same thing?
As this war tears apart our country, so too, it tears apart our families. We hate this war and all war and we thank you all for your insight.

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