The cost of the War

I wept when I saw this. See the rest of the slideshow.

The policies pursued by the Government have a human impact. Lives are lost, and back home, lives are destroyed. A mother, a widow, a little 6-year-old girl have all had their lives destroyed. Could Bush look those people in the eyes and tell them that they died doing something good?

Are our goals in Iraq and Afganistan worth the lives of the child, the husband and the father? Our goals in Afganistan are clear, and our purpose just, but the Republicans don't seem to care about Afganistan any more. And I will live the rest of my life without understanding what we are doing in Iraq, and why.

Neither the American nor the Iraqi peoples want our army in Iraq, and Bush's leadership has destroyed any chance of ever winning. In Afganistan, Bush's obsession with Iraq has seriously hurt our chances of winning. The Republicans cannot stay in power, for they will never question the War in Iraq, and they will never question the conduct of the War in Afganistan.

The Administration would ban these pictures. They think only what is good for their Republican party. They don't want to confront people with the brutality of their policies, their lack of compassion for the consequences of their actions. They just wish that the crying brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers, and children would just go away.

The Administration did ban photos of the flag-draped caskets. Why? What is the message of those photos? The War in Iraq is a disgrace: it wasn't provoked, justified, or even intelligently fought. Even so, if the president asks a soldier to die for his honorless war, that the honor of the individual soldier remains intact.

It would be a wonderful world if these Wars never got back to those families, but we don't live in that world. We do live in the world where one man's ego and lust for power can bring a nation to War, where one man's obsession with Iraq has led to a failing effort in Afganistan, and where one man's idiocy has destroyed Iraq.

The only thing that can stand up to this one man is the people of this country, but inthis country, the Press and the People of America are afraid to question this one man.

This is not George Bush's America, it is not the Republican's America, it is our America, and we do get to send Bush a message next Tuesday.