A Citizen's Cry - From before the war

[Dems2002]

I posted this before the war - I am having a very difficult time understanding our Democratic Leaders - I think at the end of the day, we are going to have to look seriously at getting rid of Democrats who supported this war. It was wrong, we all knew it was wrong, and most of them were too cowardly to step to the plate.

Subj: Citizen's Cry

My country is planning to drop 3,000 bombs on a primarily defenseless nation with little hope of killing the man it calls the "evil one." I have protested, I have screamed, I have written diatribes to various news outlets, I have called my congresswoman, my senators and the local dog-catcher. I talk to myself and others about the evilness of this plan in public places in the hopes that strangers will overhear and realize either that they are not alone or that not everyone follows blindly. And yet as this march to war is declared inevitable I realize that this hasn't been enough.

History does not look kindly on seemingly good people who do nothing. I wonder if I and my fellow Americans are going to someday be compared to German citizens who watched and disbelieved as concentration camps were erected in backyards. To citizens who disagreed, but only to a point; a point that invariably began and ended with saving personal skins. Had these people but known what was to come certainly they would have done more. Mightn't I?

Maybe I'm making too much of this talk of thousands of bombs. The Democratic leaders in Congress don't seem overly concerned. The news media appear veritable cheerleaders. Surely, if something truly unjust and horrible were about to be done in our name these protectors of the public-good wouldn't tacitly condone it with silence and propaganda. Of course they wouldn't. Would they?

But what else can I do? I am just one person. What can one person standing alone accomplish? Gandhi who? I have to work, my family has to eat. Life goes on, you know?

I'm probably just trippin' anyway. What do I really know about geopolitical affairs? This is the United States of America. We don't bomb countries without good reason. Just because no one seems to know what that reason is and the entire world is against us, doesn't mean that we aren't right. Right?

I don't think we're right. I think history is going to look at us and judge. I don't expect it to be kind. Maybe, just maybe, there's still time.

Best,

Jennifer Rindahl