AmerCon : my child and my tears

my child and my tears
2004.11.11

We have chosen our path, declared our will, and revealed our national heart.

We have voted to return an Administration to office that has, for the first time in modern
history, invaded and occupied another country without an honest reason or a moral cause.
The court of world opinion is against us.

We have invaded a backward third-world nation without a navy, an air force, or even much in
the way of infrastructure. We met an ill-prepared and poorly equipped army that wisely
melted away when we arrived. We declared "Mission Accomplished" before we had even
begun to pump the oil we imagined would
"pay" for our gift of liberation.

And we didn't plan ... or even prudently consider the possibility ... of meeting an opposition to
our presence as resolute and innately brave as our own.

Now -- with a military that costs more than the aggregate cost of every other military in the
world -- we are losing ground every day to an organized and formidable insurgency that
fights us street-to-street with simple weapons and religious determination. We continue our
assault with the historical certainty that no force has ever beaten a determined insurgency --
for the simple reason that you can never find it, you can't even identify it, and it is inflamed
and strengthened by the very forces you use to quell it.

The fantasy that we will quickly train an Iraqi force to beat a zealous military adversary that we
can't defeat is incomprehensible.

In summary, we are losing a fight we can't win ... but we won't give up until forced to do
so ... and we will fight harder and with harsher tactics ... and we will continue to kill more
innocents ... even as we lose our own. So far, as a country that arrogantly espouses "family
values" as both a ruling ethic and a moral imperative, it is estimated that we have killed
perhaps 100,000 civilians and devastated (that's far too small a word) countless families and
communities.

How can we possibly believe the indolent assertion that we are wanted in Iraq and that our
rule is trusted? Neither Democrats nor Republicans trust the other to govern in our own
country; and we actually share the same language, the same religion, the same history, and
the same democracy.

Somewhere and somehow we need to pause. We need to remember who we are and
consider how we got here.

Our definition of a rogue state is one led by a fundamentalist, armed with weapons of mass
destruction, that assumes the right of preemptive attack, and invades other countries without
just cause. Have we become what we fear in others?

We have chosen this. We guide this moment of America's history.

Are we writing our music in the stars or are we drawing destruction

in the sand?

This is on

our

conscience now. We have -- with eyes wide open --

chosen this.

I have read the spiritual writings of the world. And what I know is

very simple.

This man is my brother.

This child is my own beloved child. These

tears and this anguish and this never-ending ache are mine.

As a humbled citizen and a saddened liberal (for you have labelled

me so), I invoke my own personal experience of the divine.

God, please forgive us.

ehj2