Finding Closure

From Information Clearing House: Finding Closure

...it was only five months ago when I was counting days to escape the suffocating madness of Operation Iraqi Freedom II... Whenever I glance at war coverage on a television, or hear the ignorant hate-talk of our blood mongering president, or read the latest death tolls in the news papers my eyes fill with rage and my heart fills with sorrow. It is impossible for me to ignore what is going on in Iraq when I am constantly reminded of the death and carnage, as well as my participation in the war machine...

There is nothing that I feel can alleviate the guilt for being directly involved with our illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. I ask myself from time to time, “Why was I so afraid to resist the order to go to war? Why didn’t I object to the whole damned thing?” I have been told many times not to be ashamed for my service to this country, but I can’t help a genuine intuition that this war is not designed to promote freedom and our beautiful American way of life, but instead only carried out to proliferate Western imperialism and corporate profits every time a bullet is fired. My guilt is synonymous with the sentiment that I was indeed on the wrong side of the wire.

I know that many Americans are completely unaware of what damage our military is wreaking not only in Iraq, but also on our homeland security. An estimated 100,000+ of innocent Iraqi civilians have perished due to gross negligence at the hand of the US military. Not a single day goes by without a non-combatant man, woman or child being slain due to stray bullets, wildly aimed mortar or rocket rounds, or the use of massively destructive air deployed warheads in urban areas. And as this unjustified war continues to rage with no end in sight, the anti-American sentiment across the world continues to escalate enormously. While in Iraq, I never once saw a terrorist with extreme inclinations for senseless bloodshed, but only angry farmers and shop keepers who for one reason or another wish to end our empirical domination over their homeland. What I saw was an honest insurrection fought by average citizens, a perfect guerrilla war ran by no centralized leadership and with the potential to overcome any obstacle furnished by the conventional coalition forces. By any sensible logic, fighting terrorism with war is only counter-productive and in the long run only adds fuel to the fire. With every insurgent we kill, five more stand in his place. One has to ask how this illegitimate attack on innocent citizens is keeping Americans both at home or abroad safe from the perils of a desperate terrorist attack. One thing that I learned in this war was that the Iraqis are people like you or me. They want the very same things out of life as anyone else in the world. Like everyone, they wish only to raise their families and be merry with friends and enjoy life for all that its worth in a peace and harmony that everyone deserves. But the hardest aspect of this lesson rests in the knowledge that every time a child is murdered, a terrorist is born.

And for all this, you can thank the Bush administration. Not the terrorists, not Bin Laden, not Hussein, not the Taliban. The Bush administration. Death incorporated.

Also, dig this related sentiment on Mike of the North's site.