Thoughts on the War in Iraq

      I rarely speak out about politics, but I’m going to make an exception today. Feel free to just skip this post if it’s going to ruin your whole day.

     This morning Phil Donahue was on Good Day Live (a local CA show).  He called the war in Iraq ‘a massive blunder.’ I really haven’t paid much attention to Phil Donahue, but I swear every word out of his mouth this morning echoed what I have said to friends and family again and again. That you’d think we would have remembered from the Vietnam War that going to a war is just not the brightest idea.

     Now before you start hollering at me, I should say I grew up in a military family. My father was in the Vietnam War when I was in the sixth grade. It totally upturned my life. We had to move from an air force base in NM to live with relatives in CA. There was a good chance that our family of five children could have ended up fatherless. So I thought America would be slow to ever go to war again.  I thought we had protest songs in our blood. I thought we would demand that our government makes smart choices with foreign policy from now on. We didn’t even attack the right enemy. Imagine a bully next door on the right beating up your kid.  So you blow up the house on the left. No matter how I look at it, it makes no sense.

     Phil talked about how unpopular it was to speak out against the War in Iraq when it first started. It nearly cost him his career and he was accused of being unpatriotic but now the tide is turning the other way.

On blogs I wrote at the time, I called it the never-ending war. I knew it wouldn’t be a quick clean up job like the government wanted us to believe. I’m not even surprised this thing is dragging on and on. George Bush can’t call it off because he’s going to look like he led us down a suicide path.

    One thing Phil Donahue did point out was how sugar-coated this war is. The press was told not to photograph coffins or maimed soldiers. No one wants to take off their blinders and see this for the atrocity that it is. Mr. Donahue said that if even one more person dies in this war, it’s inexcusable. He has a film coming out that interviews soldiers that have come back in bad shape.

     I feel like part of the rational of war is how you believe in your own mind about it. People that believe war equals glory or war equals freedom are much more likely to want to wage war.

     Personally my two beliefs are war is stupid and war is death.