4,567 American soldiers are dead due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
1,150,000 million Iraqis have died if the mortality rate from the 2006 Lancet study is extrapolated.
http://antiwar.com/casualties/ [Lancet study link]
Congress and the Bush Administration have forgotten they are Tools of We the People, not our Overlords. The Democrats in Congress have no integrity, no principles since they failed to do the job they were elected to do in 2006, to bring the troops home. Growing numbers of Americans are sick of these wars Growing numbers of Americans are sick of these wars, and Iraq in particular has eerily strange parallels to Vietnam (see My Father's Vietnam is My Iraq - Disturbing Parallels).
The Republican mainstream candidate from the Senate is vociferously for the War, and the Democrats candidates are at best weak-hearted and indecisive about the withdrawal, their lack of leadership in the Senate to end the war continues today, and their tacit agreement to bankroll the invasion continues. Senator Clinton even sounds like McCain these days stating that if Iran attacks Israel, the USA will "totally obliterate them" As the oath for the office of the President has nothing to do with the state security of Israel, or how much $$ is received from the Israel Lobby, Clinton sounds more like Hitler than a future POTUS. Ever hear of diplomacy? So now we face the Clear and Present Danger to Ourselves! of bombing Iran, a neutral state that appears in a panic state as it proclaims non-aggression towards all and is frantically searching for friends, see Iran Declares War on the Dollar = More War for America
I continue to search for other candidates that will not go to war so carelessly, and I am pleased to report I found another. Vern McKinley is running for the House in the 10th congressional district of Virginia. I wrote Vern an email (info@mckinleyforcongress.com) inquiring as to his stance on wars before sending a donation, with two caveats that I was only considering a piddly donation, and that I didn't even live in Virginia.
His name is Vern McKinley, and he did something very strange. He wrote me back. (Background - this is from a California resident who has written his Representative and Senators over 60 times, sometimes from a personal email and sometimes using www.downsizedc.org, sometimes reasonably and sometimes frantically. I am still waiting for my first reply, its like writing to a wall)
Vern explained his stance was he "would not sanction war against any other nation outside of Iraq unless it was in our ‘national interest’ defined narrowly to mean if we were under clear and imminent threat of attack or had been attacked. Like Dr. Paul [he feels] the only justified war that met this test the last 100 years was WW II."
Vern is running on a limited government platform, and is billed as the "First Ron Paul Republican," since he decided to run before Dr. Paul announced his candidacy for President. You can research him if you like by using the links provided below
[mckinleyforcongress.com] ['First RP Republican" interview] http://www.maydaymckinley.com/ [Mckinley vid]
Back to the war.
Imagine yourself as a soldier in the sands of Iraq. It's pretty hot and people want to kill you.
Imagine yourself as a parent and your son/daughter dies one day in Afghanistan. You still have to regularly pump that black oil into your car to get to work.
Imagine yourself as a child in Iraq and having your house subjected to raids, just like the British once did to us. Or is this already happening? See Wait - A Water Heater Installer is Not a Drug Expert?
Raw emotion is good if you can channel it for a purpose. I will leave you with a poem from Andrea Gibson called "For Eli" and a final comment from me. (However, any readers are able to figure out the teddy bear thing, please leave a comment, as I am easily confused.) This article is so obviously dedicated to my brother.
[link to Andrea Gibson's website] [For Eli live performance vid]
"Eli came back from Iraq
and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist
above that a medic with an IV bag
above that an angel
but Eli says the teddy bear won't live
and I know I don't know but I say, "I know"
cause Eli's only twenty-four and I've never seen eyes
further away from childhood than his
eyes old with a wisdom
he knows I'd rather not have
Eli's mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm
and says, "not all casualties come home in body bags"
and I swear
I'd spend the rest of my life writing nothing
but the word light at the end of this tunnel
if I could find the ******* tunnel
I'd write nothing but white flags
somebody pray for the soldiers
somebody pray for what's lost
somebody pray for the mailbox
that holds the official letters
to the mothers,
--------------fathers,
--------------------sisters,
and little brothers
of Micheal 19... Steven 21... John 33
how ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses
the hearse is parked in the halls of the high school
recruiting black, brown and poor
while anti-war activists
outside walter reed army hospital scream
100, 000 slain
as an amputee on the third floor
breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pain
but how can we forget what we never knew
our sky is so perfectly blue it's repulsive
somebody tell me where god lives
cause if god is truth god doesn't live here
our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by
there are ghosts of kids who are still alive
touting M16s with trembling hands
while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor
another missile sets fire to the face in the locket
of a mother who's son needed money for college
and she swears she can feel his photograph burn
how many wars will it take us to learn
that only the dead return
the rest remain forever caught between worlds of
shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl
to
welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?
the mortar of sanity crumbling
stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again
Eli doesn't know if he can ever write a poem again
one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
tell me what land of the free
sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
hones them like missiles
then returns their bones in the middle of the night
so no one can see
each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt
each life a promise we never kept
Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq
and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose
the night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap
rocking like a baby
rocking like daddy, save me
and don't think for a minute he too isn't collateral damage
in the mansions of washington they are watching them burn
and hoarding the water
no senators' sons are being sent out to slaughter
no presidents' daughters are licking ashes from their lips
or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks
in case they ever make it home alive
our eyes are closed
america
there are souls in
the boots of the soldiers
america
**** your yellow ribbon
you wanna support our troops
bring them home
and hold them tight when they get here"
- Andrea Gibson, "For Eli"
________________________________________________________________________
What a world this would be if on the day the new President took office he said, "World, I am so sorry for the events of the last 8 years, and we profess non-aggression to all nations. The Iraq war was wrong, the Afghanistan war was wrong. We especially apologize to the people of both these countries. We will immediately leave these states, and wish both nations luck in fixing the mess we made. Sorry but we are broke, America has been neglected for far too long. You can keep all of the supplies and infrastructure the American taxpayer paid for, we will leave these all behind. We will also make plans for leaving all of the 700 military bases we have built in 130 countries. Our military empire is over, we will lead the world in ushering in true peace and bind our world together by the economies. Pax Americana starts now. Fellow Americans and the World, I apologize for the deceit of Powell, Bush, Cheney and many others – and they will be accountable for any crimes they are charged with and found guilty of, a right we denied to the occupants of Guantanamo and many other prisons. This was evil and inhumane, and they will be released back to their home countries immediately and with reparations. Even if they did commit terrorist acts, we have broken the rule of law and worse, our American principles, in holding them for years and years without trial in conditions that knowingly failed to meet the Geneva conventions." and so forth.
OK I will wake up now.
Preemptive War and Freedom Video Clips
©2008 Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Monday, May 5, 2008
Last modified: Sunday, October 11, 2009
The views expressed in this article are those of Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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