by this time tomorrow i will most likely be living, for the second time of my life, in a country at war.
the first time we went to war with iraq i was fourteen years old and in eighth grade. i was significantly less political than i am now. it was almost exciting; we all wore yellow ribbons and kept scrapbooks and "supported our troops." and when we argued, we argued about women in the frontlines of the military. but even then, in the back of my mind, it didn't feel right. i knew people were going to die. for geoploitical borders, for oil, for all the stupid reasons that the human species makes up to kill each other.
this time. this time i am twenty-five years old. i understand the history of my countries indiscretions. i recognize the bias of the media, and let's just say i'm a little further left than i used to be (and i was pretty far left already at fourteen).
the first time we went to war with iraq, it was with the blessing of the united nations. iraq had invaded kuwait, it had made the first move of aggression. we could at least fool ourselves into believing that what we were doing was noble. we were helping a weaker, occupied country.
this time, iraq has made no such moves. i make no attempts to defend saddam hussein; he is a bad man. i may even go so far as to say he is an evil man, though i think that's taking things a bit far. but can we say he's a threat just because someone else told us he's a threat?
and of course, our world no longer feels safe to me. my god, how could it feel safe to anyone? we say building collapse under the weight of passenger airplanes used as moving, screaming bombs. people we knew were killed. our cocoon was shattered. and we're scared. i admit that i personally am scared to death. and angry at anyone who would have enough hatred to do what those people did. and of course the threat of a nut in a foreign country with big guns is serious now.
the problem is, what about the nut in our country with the big guns? bush scares me. to me, he is the embodiment of the backlas--the white men who feel like the last 30 years have given them a raw deal. who want their power back, at any cost. hell, i'm not even entirely sure that he even is the legal president. how suspicious is it that the one state with real discrepancies was the state his brother governs? and why is it that clinton had to defend himself because he smoked pot, but bush can openly admit to having been addicted to cocaine? why was whitewater so huge but bush's use of the texas rangers to seize land for a stadium was largely overlooked? i never wanted to be one of those conspiracy theory nuts, but the pattern is there and it is damn scary.
the thing is--how can anyone say a war we are about to declare is unavoidable? how can anyone stand up and say that we are prepared to use weapons of mass destruction in order to prevent someone else from making weapons of mass destruction (we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong...)? how do you stand up and commission the deaths of innocent people?
i feel like this war is a boulder that someone nudged off the side of a hill. like it's just taken on this momentum of its own, and there's nothing anyone can do about it now. because who exactly is listening to those of us who are begging for this not to happen. i think i'm in mourning. for the country i thought i was living in. for the country i no longer recognize, or feel myself to be a part of. for the gains i thought we had made since vietnam. for my idea of america.
how do i go about my life in the face of this? how can i get up and shower and go to work and play with Princess Messyface, knowing it could all end? that i might not be around to have my own family, that there might not be a world for her to grow up in? how can i sleep knowing that somewhere in iraq that's already happening to someone?
dona nobis pacem. --beatpoetgrrl
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