Iraq Moratorium – Where’s the happy ending?

(8 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

It’s a simple reaction to a problem that affects so many lives, but I have a simple mind.  In my world of books, the happy ending is still my favorite way to conclude a story.  In the “real” world, happy endings are elusive.

Yesterday, I read the stories of people, many of them young people and children, who lost the struggle to live as the people they knew themselves to be and lost their lives because someone, often a relative or a friend, found it justifiable to eradicate them.  Today, I think of the children in Afghanistan and Iraq who have seen too much terror and sadness and loss for a heart to endure.  Some of those children will die.  Others will grow up to hate.  Where is the happy ending here?

I believed that President-elect Barack Obama held out hope for an immediate end to the conflict in the Middle East, and already, that hope has been dashed.  Quoting from the official Obama/Biden website at http://www.barackobama.com/iss…

Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

2010?  How many more young American men and women will die by then?  How many more children will lose parents and friends and watch their homes turned to rubble and see injustices go unpunished?  And can we count on the promise when corporate concerns are still more important than human concerns and when the development of bigger guns is still considered tantamount to our national security?

And where will troops be redeployed?  In Afghanistan.  There are children in Afghanistan, too.  And there are U.S. troops fighting forces and terrain we have no reason from history to believe we can stand against.  How long will this go on?

Today, I will put up my posters once again and share with the people who visit my office the faces and drawings and poetry of the children in Iraq.  Today, I will try my best to fan a human response to the miserable conditions in which these children survive.  Please join me.

Let’s be heroes today.