Father Andrew Greeley in Chicago Sun-Times: "What is the point of Iraq deaths?"

[WildEyedLiberal]

One word for this editorial: WOW.

I found myself pondering as I watched the heartbreaking Veterans Day ceremonies on television, what the government will tell the family -- parents, spouse, children -- of the last American to die in Iraq. Or the families of all the men and women who have died there. What was the point in their deaths? They fought bravely for their country. They did their duty. They will be missed. Their courage is an honor to their sacrifice. That should be enough and that's all there is.

They died defending American freedom? But American freedom was never at issue. They died to protect the country from weapons of mass destruction, to create a democracy in the midst of the Arab world, to win a victory that would enhance American credibility, to keep faith with those who had already died, to get rid of Saddam Hussein, because the president said it was the right thing to do, because Iraq was the central front in the war or terror?

Or should they be told the real truth? Their young person died because of the arrogance and the ignorance of the American government, because of mistakes and blunders, because some of our leaders thought the war was a good thing, because it would take pressure off of Israel, because of Arab oil.

cont....

http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/147970,CST-EDT-GREEL24.article

Don't just read the snip I posted... read it all. It's the most powerful editorial about Iraq I've ever read. If there were more Father Greeleys and fewer Cardinal Ratzingers in the Church, I might still go to Mass.

It's just a shame that none of the Democratic presidential wannabes have condemned the immorality of this war. Oh, wait... there is that one fella, the one the media won't mention unless they can mock him like a group of cruel teenaged harpies, the tall and pensive veteran who knows all too well the tragic cost of immoral wars. He's called this war immoral, several times.

The media and the other candidates are terrified that America will find this out, because they know deep in their hearts that 2008 will be a referendum on Iraq, and there is exactly one candidate who speaks with the moral clarity this nation so desperately craves. You cannot manufacture moral clarity, and that is precisely why Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and the news media are equally threatened by John Kerry. All of the above are far too invested in either hyping, supporting, apologizing, or making excuses for this immoral lie of a war, and they are desperately hoping to convince the American people otherwise. The presence of John Kerry makes their charade impossible. For that reason alone, their entire futures depend on silencing him.

Truth, however, cannot be swept under the rug so easily. The American people have had enough of the lies, the deceptions, and the bloodshed, and they want change. That inconvenient truth does not bode well for those whose futures are deeply invested in the maintenance of the status quo. The winds of change are blowin'....

[JI7]

1. no matter who wins the nomination, election etc. Kerry and others like him

will not be silent on what is going on. and that's what those like Susan Estrech who only view this in terms of political strategy don't get.

it's not political strategy for most people. you have people like Chuck Hagel who are also speaking out. Hagel is very conservative and a veteran himself. it's not just the liberal anti war protestor from Massachusettes as they would like to claim. and of course the people who are afraid to speak out for fear of being associated with liberals, massachusettes or anything else that is not conservative.

[globalvillage]

2. Amazing editorial from Fr Greeley.

"President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney killed them."

So, will the media attack or ignore? There is so much truth in Fr Greeley's words, I like to think some day the media will get to a point where they have to start doing their jobs and holding the admin accountable for what they've done. And start giving credit to those like Sen Kerry who have been trying to wake people up to the tragedy and the waste of lives bush and Cheney are responsible for.
We shall see.

[ProSense]

3. Father Greeley has written some of the most compelling commentary about Bush's war. This

says it all:

The issue now is whether the new coalition of leaders can find the quickest, safest way out. We must hope and pray that they can, that the hubris that led the country into the war will not prevent us from getting out.

[TayTay]

4. I go back to that April speech again

That really was something. Look at how carefully that speech was written. Sen. Kerry specifically laid out the justification for his actions in opposing the Vietnam War, after he came back from serving in it. It was not done in an objective and distancing manner. The passages are personal, the observations are personal, the memories invoked obviously still seering:

I believed then, just as I believe now, that it is profoundly wrong to think that fighting for your country overseas and fighting for your country's ideals at home are contradictory or even separate duties. They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin. And that's certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier than 1971.

By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen-disproportionately poor and minority Americans-were being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there.

Go back and read that speech and notice how many 'I' statements are in the beginning of that speech. That was personal and that sense that we were hearing something being shared that was not 'book-learning' but something learned first hand was palpable in the room at the time it was delivered. My Lord, read that paragraph above. This is a United States Senator, with 21 years of experience in the Congress talking. The condemnation of the government and it's wrongful and deceitful actions are extraordinary. (I just have never heard the like and I doubt I ever will.)

You can call this speech up on C-Span in their video library. Listen to the emphasis in the last line of the first paragraph. All the moral outrage, all that sense of betrayal and lives lost for no good reason is in the way that line "that he knew victory was no longer a possibility" is said. OMFG. (Again, this is a US Senator speaking. Think about that. No one else talks like this. No one.)

The rest of that speech is also amazing. It's almost prescient when Kerry talks about all the people in US history who have been marginalized, ridiculed and shunned for speaking out against the wrongs the Government has done. Lincoln was driven from the Congress for speaking out against the propaganda of the war in 1848. (And all the other examples.) Sen. Kerry knows the cost of speaking out. He understands this intimately. He enumerated all the ways that it can happen.

Even so, even against the vast power of the President and the entrenched powers in Washington, even against all that, there is one lesson to be learned from Vietnam and now, sadly, from Iraq:

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.

It is not bad politics. It's not a scholastic problem that needs to be solved in some emotional vacuum, it's not something that needs to be handled so that there is no political fallout that damages the chance of holding Congressional seats. It is a situation "that cried out for dissent, demanded truth, and could not be denied by easy slogans like "peace with honor"-or by the politics of fear and smear."

Senator Kerry delivered this speech in front of that enormous picture of Sen. Daneil Webster, the great orator of the Senate in the first half of the 19th century. That pictures is captioned with the phrase, "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever." It depicts the moment when Daniel Webster staked his political career on the Great Compromise that brought Missouri into the Union. Webster lost his bet and the Union did not survive long after his compromise and his act of sheer political courage. It was unbelievable to see that speech in April and to know hear those words there. I don't think I will ever hear a finer speech or one that risked and meant so much.

My Lord, the speeches and the words only got more precise and more intent. The call to moral conscience only sharpened. We heard this in Sept in that same place.

It is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict without a strategy that can work -- on a mission that has not weakened terrorism but worsened it.

It is immoral to lie about progress in that war to get through a news cycle or an election.

It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn -- and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost that day. They were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.

And it is deeply immoral to compare a majority of Americans who oppose a failing policy and seek a winning one to appeasers of Fascism and Naziism.

WEL, I agree. There are other very strong voices opposing this war. There have been other Senators who have made impassioned pleas to end this and withdraw. But no one, no other United States Senator is calling this an immoral action and staking his future on it, not the way Kerry is. Not by a long shot. I very much doubt I will ever see anything like it again in my lifetime.