A Letter to my Daughter: We Tried to Stop This War

[babylonsister]

A Letter to my Daughter: We Tried to Stop This War

By Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted March 21, 2008.

'Whoever becomes the next president, this war will continue to impact your life for many years to come.'


Dear Kalila,

It has been five years since you, as a 12-year old 7th grader, joined your classmates in a walk-out at your school in protest of the impending invasion of Iraq.

You are now a 17-year old high school senior just months from graduating, and the war - which we were told would only involve U.S. combat forces for a few months - is still going on. As you enter college in the fall, some of your classmates whom you have known since childhood could be entering Iraq to fight in a war that should never have been fought.

As a consequence of this war of aggression, you are entering adulthood with the United States despised throughout the world and the threat of mega-terrorism from extremist groups higher than ever. Furthermore, it appears that this war will end up costing more than 3 trillion dollars, money that you will be paying, with interest, for decades to come. This money could instead have gone to health care, education, the environment, housing, public transportation, and other human needs that could have made your life and the lives of others of your generation safer, healthier, and happier. Already, the economic impact of the war is becoming apparent in your life. Your long-promised graduation present of a European trip is looking less affordable as the dollar plummets in value and your parents are scrambling - as a result of cutbacks in federal assistance - to figure out a way to pay your college tuition next year.

As you remember, your mother and I worked very hard to try to stop this war. We so very much wish you could have avoided experiencing, as we did during our adolescence, our country engaged in a brutal counter-insurgency war in a foreign land.

I remember how much you missed me as I traveled around the country giving speeches and interviews to try to convince the public and elected officials that Iraq was not a threat to our national security and that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be a disaster. I remember your tears as you heard me denounced on national television as a "supporter of Saddam Hussein" and claims that my research "was funded by terrorists." And you no doubt remember the negative impact the stress and exhaustion from that period had on my health as well as my relations with you, your siblings, and your mother.

Yet I also remember your pride in seeing me speak before half a million people in San Francisco at the anti-war march, your excitement in getting to use my backstage pass to meet Bonnie Raitt, and your appreciation of being a part of history that sunny February afternoon. I have seen you attend subsequent marches on your own, still convinced that, while unable to prevent the war, you could still try to end it.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/80432/

[HockeyMom]

1. Very nice post

Hopefully, we can elect a President who can bring them home and PREVENT more wars from spreading.

[GOPBasher]

2. Rec'd. n/t

[Faygo Kid]

3. Excellent. Never, ever forget that many of us vehemently opposed this war.

We were never surprised when Bush initiated "shock and awe" with the full acqueiescence of too many Dem politicians.

Many of us spoke out then. We saw what was coming. I will never forget what I felt and saw in 2002. And what some did, and others didn't.

[Hannah Bell]

4. I, along with some others, spent a year protesting in the run-up

to the war & after, every weekend. also letter-writing, organizing a teach-in, & 2 of us visited iraq.

For this, we got flipped off, cursed at, & spit at from cars, & nearly run over once. For this, I got ridiculed at work and by family (conservative town).

Now that supposedly 60% of the pop opposes the war, where the heck are they?

If everyone who opposed the war would take even the minor risk of going to a demo, or organize to write, call, & generally torment this admin, they could shut the war down.

But they won't take even those minor risks or inconveniences. They just bitch. I'm coming to believe most people won't take any risks until their own butt gets bitten.

[Hannah Bell]

5. Why, when a majority of the population opposes the war &

has for some time, is the anti-war leadership not mobilizing those people?

Where IS everyone?