Five down, how many more?
Iraq war leaves many questions, few answers
03/20/2008
Five years before the date of this writing, American war planes pummeled Baghdad and other parts of Iraq with thousands of bombs. Days later, ground forces invaded the nation.
Two months later, President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on board an aircraft carrier.
We are still there. Killing and dying and shattering a country we had no business being in. We are still there. Lives are shattering every day on the shores of the Persian Gulf, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in the cradle of civilization. Here in the United States we are weary. Everyday our own worlds shatter on the shores of the Atlantic, the Pacific, The Gulf of Mexico and along the banks of the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Colorado rivers, and in the heartland of our nation.
Today, nearly 4,000 Americans have died in the conflict – a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 90,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths since the war began. Still, sadly, it is the familiar that resonates most, and the deaths of those 4,000 Americans brought with them the deaths of countless more American hearts. Now there are roughly 1,300 more than were killed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, attacks which ostensibly led us toward this conflict, but, we now know, were not the handiwork of Saddam Hussein.
How many more crestfallen mothers must there be? How many more children will be left fatherless and motherless? How many more brothers, how many more sisters, how many more grandchildren will we lose? How many more hearts will be broken? How many more lovers will be lost?
How many more years will we spiral downward? How many more grandmothers will we see under arrest for exercising their most American right, the right to dissent, to question, to stop their government from spending billions of their tax dollars to send their children and grandchildren off to fight and die for a handful of lies?
How many more terrorist attacks will there be with the real masterminds of Sept. 11 still on the loose? How many other nations’ confidence will we lose? How much trust will we betray? How many more elections must there be? How many schools must close because there is no longer any money to help our children thrive? How much more money
will we waste on sweetheart deals for private contractors while our soldiers do the best job they possibly can do with so little we have given them?
How many more years? How many more lies? How many more tragedies?
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