Reply #15: Why is it, I wonder [View All]

[ninkasi]

that some of us are so haunted by this war? I was opposed to it from the very beginning, just as many of us here were. I read about the violence, the death, the maiming, and the destruction of everything that matters to the Iraqis. I go to the grocery store, and feel revulsion at the countless products on display, because I remember a story I read before my trip, about people being killed at a bakery, or a vegetable stand, trying to buy food. I plan on gifts for my grandchildren, and great-nephews, and images of dead Iraqi children are in my thoughts.

It seems that almost every aspect of my life is tainted by thoughts of what life must be like for my counterpart in Iraq, a 63 year old grandmother, who most of all loves her family, and her close friends. My husband says I am too caught up in my disgust for this war. I answer that while I opposed it, it's still my country which caused it, and the president, as much as I loathe him, who is the one most responsible.

The horrible pain we have inflicted upon Iraq is utterly without redemption. Aside from Bush's egotistical desire to be a "war president", a goal which apparently enabled him to ignore the destruction of another country, and the enriching of Bush and Cheney's cronies bank accounts, there is absolutely no reason that this war should have been started. I am devastated that the country I was born in has so abandoned any pretense at having moral principles, that we have engaged in the complete and utter brutality that has defined this war.

Why is it that we who opposed this crisis from the beginning, are the ones who are feeling the most guilt now? How can Bush, and Cheney, and the others have a single second of peace, knowing what disaster they have unleashed? My only conclusion is that they are completely amoral, caring only about their own interests, and that the lives of hundreds of thousands of us are not worth a second of their time, or thought. I can't wait for them to be gone completely in 2008.