five years ago

In the spring of 1989, I was seven years old. My parents had a scratchy blue couch, and I was sitting on it. I was wearing a tee shirt that used to be my older sister's; it was covered in puffy painted seashells and covered my knees. I should've been in bed, I think, but I was watching the news instead. People were in streets yelling and carrying signs and running. There were people with guns and angry faces. Everything looked jumpy and strange. One of the cameramen dropped a camera and someone else picked it up and kept filming. I was afraid and got up to stand, half-hidden, behind the couch. I put my cheek against the rough upholstery and kept watching.

I was seven years old. I knew about wars. I had been to a Civil War battlefield and felt the buzzy boom of cannons in the bones of my chest. I knew my ancestors had fought in the American Revolution. I thought wars were fought for good reasons and to keep people safe. I never knew that governments did bad things, that they could send soldiers to shoot at teenagers for running through the streets carrying signs. I thought governments were like my parents: benevolent makers of sometimes mystifying rules. Watching the tanks roll into Tianamen Square was this terrifying moment in which I realized the world wasn't the mostly-good place I'd always believed it to be.

In the spring of 2003, I was twenty one. My parents had a beige, over-stuffed couch then, and I was perching on its arm. I was wearing my teeshirt with the firetrucks on it and watching the invasion of Iraq with a sick feeling in my stomach. I kept thinking about that day years earlier and kept thinking, over and over, you can not sign my name to this fucking bad idea; you can not sign my name to this.

I love America. I do. With the same kind of love you might have for your chainsmoking anti-Semitic grandparents: I know its flaws and faults, but somehow it's a relationship that goes deeper than those things. I think about the way gray highways stretch out toward the horizon and about my great-great-grandmother cursing and spitting at yankee soldiers. I think about corn dogs and tap dancing chorus lines and the Bill of Rights. I think about blues and rock and roll and Richard Avedon's In the American West. I think about Zion National Park, Mother Jones, and the maple trees I grew up climbing, and I find myself in the arms of a fierce and unexpected devotion.

Five years ago, Senator Robert Byrd stood in front of Congress and delivered a speech* that said many of the things I'm trying to articulate today:

I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.
But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.
We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat U.N. Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, al-Qaida, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.

The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.

But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. If we attack Saddam Hussein, we will probably drive him from power. But, the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.

The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?

War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.

A few hours after these words were said, the war began. And it continues, with no clear objectives and no clear successes, gleeful presidential proclamations not withstanding. It continues with around four thousand Americans dead and thirty thousand wounded. It continues with more than 80,000 Iraqis dead from violence. It continues as mortality rates continue to climb. It continues as violence escalates in recent days. I cannot sign my name to this tragedy. I will not sign my name to this.

I skipped my Wednesday night class to go to a peace rally. I held a candle close to my chest and stood in a circle that contained more WW II veterans than twenty-somethings. We were silent for a long moment, and I tried to pray. I found myself near tears and unable to formulate my thoughts into a petition.

I cannot escape the conviction, that something's gone horribly, horribly wrong here. And that we've watched this travesty with a sinister breed of passivity from our over-stuffed beige couches. The days after September 11, 2001 were frightening ones. They were. But we've allowed our elected officials to parlay that fear into appalling infringements of human rights of US citizens and of foreign nationals, to parlay that fear into the largely unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, to parlay that fear into the widespread acceptance of ill-conceived, over-blown rhetoric that, at best, could be said to obscure rather than enlighten or inform.

I don't suffer from the misguided notion that the people of the US are ethically or spiritually superior to the people of other nations. But I did, with a childish feeling of familial allegiance, somehow think we could do better than this.

And it's more than time we did. Five years is five years too many. It's time to stop watching the war in Iraq recapped only on the Daily Show during Family Guy's commercials, to stop flipping past another story about a carbomb in search of the comics or updates on our basketball brackets, to stop pretending that none of this is happening. It's time to stop pretending: that girl from your high school debate team drives a Hummer in Iraq; that boy you met (and may've kissed, just a little, after your third gin and tonic) at that party is awaiting orders to ship out; your best friend's exboyfriend's old roommate is finishing up his second tour of duty. It's time to stop pretending: that screaming woman in that documentary you saw looks a little like your aunt without her makeup, and for all intents and purposes, she could be. Incidents of culture or geography do not compromise mutual humanity, and it's impossible to ignore the persistent and seemingly inexorable toll this conflict continues to wreak on Iraq's civilian population. As a nation, we've worked long and hard to ignore these facts and these faces--the grinning faces of the boys we knew from high school and the bloodied faces of families out for groceries when the lady next to them in line exploded in a hail of shrapnel. There's been five years of this. Five years.

Five years means that it is, in a manner of speaking, time to get off our collective couches and take to the streets with signs in our hands. Five years means it time we no longer let our government sign our names to this war. Five years is five years too many.

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Read up:

• http://www.amnestyusa.org/
• http://thomas.loc.gov/home/multicongress/multicongress.html
• http://www.fas.org/man/docs/qdr/
• http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/
• http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

Speak up:

• https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
• http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt
• http://www.onebigtorrent.org/

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*reprinted from salon.com

**big thanks to Josh White, who provided most of these links.