People are Standing Up

Today in the Kansas City Star, the following three letters to the editor lead off. Powerful stuff.

How many more will die?

There is a wall in Washington, a long, black wall of marbled panels inscribed with more than 58,000 names of the long dead. Many of us who did not die have walked that wall, still burdened with loss and guilt. We remember the rain and mud, and the sweat and blood, that sucked at our boots until we thought we were in a quagmire that we might never return from.

Now a much smaller number of names – more than 3,000 so far — are unrecorded and unremembered in spite of their sacrifice and loss. But what if those names were etched each day upon their own panel as they fell? How long must we walk past as each name is etched into stone? How many days, weeks, years?

And now we are called to watch as more names are to be added. Those who return will remember their boots sinking into the sands of Iraq as the hot winds of hate swirl. And for what?

Surely the Iraqis say, “When the Americans leave, then we will sort all of this out.” Would we not say and do the same if our country was occupied?

Still, the chiseler etches our brothers’ and sisters’ names into eternity, one by one, until the war is done.

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Bring our troops home

Congress has a duty to enforce the will of the American people. Legislators should withhold more funding for the war but provide funds to bring our military people home. It would be a travesty to afford this administration’s personally selected corporate gluttons further opportunities to pig out at their sumptuous Iraqi banquet financed by U.S. tax dollars.

Congress must not toady to the president’s strategies this time. It would be akin to the same self-serving fear that gave the president power to go to war. Our nation’s leaders should quit pretending our soldiers are occupying Iraq as peacekeepers. They’re targets.

Trying to mend Iraq, this country with a seething history of political and religious division, is as senseless as working a jigsaw puzzle in a tornado.

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Forget about ‘winning’ war

Last Wednesday night, President Bush made another proposal on what to do in Iraq. Generally speaking, the American public probably didn’t buy it. May I make a suggestion that I don’t believe has ever been tried and could be successful?

In simple terms, it is a strategy of intelligently managing the always inevitable societal disorder. As an example, isn’t that what a good police department does? The police department doesn’t ever “win” a war against criminal activity because it can’t. It just manages the disorder.

So in Iraq (and everywhere) the United States should forget “winning” any war against insurgents or terrorists. We should analyze the disorder and figure out intelligent methods of combating it militarily and politically. Ultimately, the disorder will subside, Iraqi society can rule again, and we can safely say goodbye.

And later in the week, they are running my letter about the new oil law that was written for western oil interests. We are pissed. And a pissed off electorate is one of the few things that truly has the power to change the world.

So change the fucking world already. These words used to be a bumper sticker, but no longer. Now they are a rallying cry...

If not us, who?

If not now, when?