It's been five years.These little essays have all been pretty soft and fluffy so far, but I am about to break angry. Five years ago today something happened. It pissed me off. And I am still pissed.
On March 17, 2003, George W. Bush announced that we would invade Iraq. Five years ago.
On March 19, 2003, the first attack by the United States of a target in Iraq occurred. Five years ago. We all hoped we would be in and out fast. Five years ago.
We all know the reasons that we were given: To find the weapons of mass destruction – that were never there. To find Saddam Hussein – who has been long found and dead of execution. To make Iraq a better place – though civilian deaths number many tens of thousands and continue at higher than pre-invasion rates today. To fight terrorism – Even though the actual terrorists of September 11, 2001 were from other countries and even though several studies show there have been more terrorism threats since the invasion than before.
9-11 and Iraq never had anything to do with each other, yet our president and his government used the ‘war on terror’ as the excuse to start this war, to continue this war, to ‘surge’ this war, preying on fear wrought on us by that day, erroneously linking the events in our collective mind, justifying an unjustifiable war that has gone on for five years.
On September 11, 2001 in attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and on the Pentagon and involving an airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania, 2998 Americans were killed. 6291 Americans were injured.
Since March 19, 2003, with the addition of two more deaths just today, 3990 American service people have been killed in Iraq. Since that date, 29,395 American service people have been injured.
Because the United States declared war on a nation, a nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. In fact, it was in December of 2006 that the number of US service people dead equaled the number killed in the 9/11 attacks. We have now caused many more of our own to be killed by sending them into this five year old unjustified unjustifiable war than the infamous 9/11 attack killed. Shame on us. Shame on us. I felt betrayed by the 9/11 attack. Now I feel just as betrayed by my own country.
3 comments:
Amen, sister. He still thinks he's right. I don't see any end to this mess. George Bush has done so much damage, that I have to agree with the Dixie Chicks.
UM, I think Pres Bush did the right thing and if he had it to do over again should do it again.
So we disagree.
Yeah, I predicted I'd get that comment. But which of his reasons was a good one? It didn't fix anything there, it doesn't make terrorism better, it made us compromise our higher moral ground on torture. Yeah, we found Sadaam but we still haven't found Bin Laden, so maybe if we'd have kept our focus on where the terrorists really came from, we'd be better off. The number I quoted for dead and injured don't include thousands and thousands of serious brain injuries due to impact that caused no physical external bodily injury but caused physical internal brain injury that will result in loss of ablilities and depression and other issues for years in the veterans. War is never a good idea. Maybe in self-defense it can be justified, but this was not self defense. It was an invasion and now it is an occupation. For every veteran for it, there are 10 against. For every Iraqi who is thankful we are there, there are 20 who resent us. You can find reasons and benifits but they won;t stand up to analysis or examination. I hoped the Democratic congress would get us out, but they turned out to be more worried about appearing moderate for political reasons than doing the right thing. I remain hopeful that after the election, whoever wins will have the spine to begin to undo this mess. And that will be a long a bloody and costly process, so the sooner they do it, the more time we will have to forget about it before they run for re-election. War is never a good thing. I wish our species would evolve beyond our need for it.
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