It’s been nearly thirty months since it was declared “Mission Accomplished,” and over two thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq. Accurate numbers on the deaths of American civilians and American wounded are not forthcoming, nor are numbers for Iraqis, whether they be soldier or civilian, dead or injured.
Today, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has left the press blue-balled again regarding indictments, but it’s clear he’s looking into the “Niger Yellowcake” memo—the one that many US Senators and Representatives claim made them decide, almost unanimously, to give the president war powers.
Today, my baby sister, whose first word I still remember, whose diaper bag I carried, and who has gotten me as drunk—if not more so—than a bunch of twenty-and-thirty-something bar veterans in New York City, woke up in the deserts of Kuwait, fixing vehicles that are scheduled to drive through hostile anti-American towns without sufficient armor.
Today, some young man who was born and raised under a brutal regime is going to wake up in a town surrounded by barbed wire, with no running water, being pulled out of his car by his liberators, who will wave guns at him and demand that he do things in a tongue he doesn’t understand.
Today, some patriotic kid from a Jesus-fearing state in the middle of his country will find himself in a strange village halfway across the world from his mother, deciding whether or not to shoot the person in the car before him, with no way of knowing if it’s someone minding his own business, or someone who’s going to kill or maim him with plastic explosives hidden in the trunk.
Today, I attended a candlelight vigil, along with one hundred and fifty other Bloomingtonians, honoring all we’ve lost since March of 2003 and earlier.
War blows.
So, all my regular readers (both of you), I need you to do me a favor and pray to whatever gods or goddesses you speak to, or meditate if you are your own God or Goddess, for some sanity.
I’m feeling sad, as if you couldn’t tell.
Jeremiah Murphy 