Enough is Enough

The New Year greets us with a grim body count in Iraq. As of this writing, 3,002 mostly young Americans have been killed during the Iraq war—a war which we are clearly losing.

It is interesting, from an intellectual standpoint, to be on the losing end of a war. Particularly when your country is the most powerful—and therefore the most dangerous—nation. Then I remember the three thousand of my countrymen who have died for this war and I forget about being intellectual. I think about their children, their hopes and dreams, their wives and husbands and parents—I think about all the moments of life both great and small which have been denied them. I think about the cause for which they have died.

As I become more convinced that we should simply leave, that we should pull out and let the ongoing civil war settle itself out just as our glorified Civil War was allowed to do, I wonder why the President doesn't see the writing on the wall.

3,002.

I wonder why, when more of our soldiers disapprove of this war than approve of it (as revealed in a recent, unprecedented Army poll), we don't admit the obvious and let the Iraqis clean up the mess we've made. I seem to remember something about self determination from civics class. Perhaps the Iraq people have their own manifest destiny. Perhaps we are mucking up the works. It seems painfully obvious to me that we are.

And if we choose to remain stubborn—or if we neglect to demand our elected officials remain true to the constitution and therefore to the people who elect them, to the people by whom they are employed—you and I will be responsible for the death of the 3,003 soldier ... and all the hundreds or thousands who will follow if this mistaken war continues.