Stop this War! (rewrite)

Our freedom, it is said, is won with the blood of brave soldiers. But as a thinking person, I have always maintained freedom was best maintained by peacemakers, and by soldiers as a last resort. As a veteran, I know that our soldiers always need support, in times of conflict and not. As a disabled veteran, I attest that the system is merely set up to send men to die and to be mutilated, but to receive little support from their government and its people when they get home. If you really support the troops, you do so with funds, not empty slogans and jingoistic ribbons on vehicles.

When I was a child, Vietnam was the same issue as it is today. The very same people who fought for ending Vietnam, who ought to know better, are now now proud to “show their support of our troops.” Supporting the troops would mean having them home with their families making a decent wage and being taken care of, not being put in harm’s way in a civil war with no end. It seems a shame they didn’t learn anything thirty some years ago about warfare and government slight of hand.

What was once black is now white. Now people give away their freedoms for a glimmer of a false sense of security and are willing to send others into harms way to garner that feeling.

The right wing agenda is to follow an old testament standard of an eye for an eye to make the Iraqi pay. How many have we killed? What have the Iraqi people done to us? I’m assuming the fervor is because they had the audacity to fight back against our unlwaful attack, decimation and occupation of their country. What we have done there is unforgivable. Bandwagon patriotism is not the answer, nor blind obedience to an administration that has gotten almost every single intelligence issue incorrect.

President Bush continues to wage his own personal agenda and war instead of listening to his constituents who are actually paying the price, while he continues to smirk his way through press conferences. As if people dying was something to smirk and joke about. I want my elected officials at the top branches of government to know that when I disagree with their policies, it is not up to them to carte blanch ignore them. Bush, for example, represents the American people, who, through a majority, support an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. But instead he’s doing what he wants, what his concience tells him, and what “god” tells him. Excuse me while I shudder and re-join forward thinking intelligent society.

The only way to support our troops is to bring them home, not to continually send more of them into harms way or extend their tours. The Republican strategy, for lack of a better word, is we’re “Staying the course,” and “We’re not cutting and running.” This rhetoric is even more rich coming from a draft dodging President. That more people should die so their sacrifice wasn’t in vain? And what about those deaths? Will it ever end? Maybe someday, but the end will not come anytime soon, if Party-Line Republicans have their way. Will we ever give peace a chance? I’m sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, but folks, every Soldier and Marine who dies in this war is dying for Iraqi freedom, not ours. And it’s for a freedom they do not want. This might be a hard pill to swallow, but it is true.

You nor I are any safer because a serviceman died in Iraq. Terrorists do not hate us for our freedom, Middle-Easterners (and thusly Muslim peoples) have never shared our way of life. It’s that simple. It is time to re-focus our priorities and for our President to stop using our citizens as cannon fodder.

Congress doesn’t want to take away funding for this war because it will look like they don’t support our troops. It isn’t like we’re going to leave them behind without what is necessary, they will be here at home. But that’s how the strings are manipulated. If you want to support the troops, support the money.

The Administration never stops and thinks of using diplomacy in our foriegn policy. We have a great many weapon at our disposal, but not arbitrators or diplomats. One Secretary of State, thousands of nuclear weapons. If we spent a fraction of the time and money we spend on peace that we do on war, we wouldn’t find ourselves in the complicated mess we are in right now and will be in the foreseeable future. Peacemakers are the real heroes who should get medals of honor, not people who just follow blindly in times of war. Real heroes stop bloodshed before it happens; not enable it, under orders or not. Diplomacy works much better and costs less, pound for pound, for the bombs we drop and the blood that cakes foreign soil. A lot of that blood is that of our troops, dying in the sand.

Someday, when the war is over, people will inevitably want to build a memorial to all of the servicemen who died during the conflict. And millions of dollars will be poured into a design and land. And you know what? I won’t contribute a dime.

Because I’d have contributed to a peaceful resolution.  Because monuments to dead soldiers who followed orders is not as great a deed as someone who would have prevented this travesty to begin with. No, instead, I’ll be giving my money to fellow disabled servicemen and women who have been left behind by a government that didn’t think far enough in advance to treat outgoing soldiers very well. Because they so desperately need and righteously deserve the best health care they can get instead of being in a war without meaning.

If getting out of Iraq now means stopping the funding for this war: Stop the funding now.