We never hear the full unembellished story of the real cost of the Iraq War in our corporate sponsored media. In fact, those who do try to the tell the truth of it are often accused of being “unpatriotic”  or of exaggerating the enormity of the sin that has been committed in our name by those whom we elected to represent us.  We only get brief passing glimpses into the into the depths of the destruction of humanity that has taken place and continues to take place in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even these small glimpses are enough to make a real human being weep at the sorrowful waste and destruction of so many lives. We Americans should do more than weep. We should start in 2012 by voting every single candidate out of office who supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in any way.  If you don’t support war then stop voting for people who do and right now that includes at least 75% of Congress.

  900,000 Widows 

In just the past week I’ve been exposed twice to two such glimpses and both images haunt me.  In fact, that is one of the reasons I’m sharing these glimpses with you–so I don’t have to bear this knowledge alone.   One was a photo of many Iraqi widows.  Beneath the photo was the caption “900,000 widows”.  Imagine 900,000 broken hearts.  Imagine hundreds of thousands of women and children–almost a million human beings cast into a lifetime of abject poverty because of the greed of a few men–most of them from the U.S. Congress and Wall Street. That is what has happened in Iraq–the creation of untold misery for at least a million human beings–most of them women and children.

The study by Los Angeles-based Relief International found that about 10 percent of the estimated 15 million women who live in Iraq are widows. Among them, 59 percent have lost their husbands during the U.S.-led war.” A simple math based on the AP summary of the study reveals the following: 10 percent of 15 million is 1.5 million. 59 percent of 1.5 million is almost 900,000. 900,000 married men, one may conclude, have died or been killed since 2003. Add to this equation untold number of unmarried men, women, and children who perished during the war.

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Murder has become the path of upward mobility for our Children.

Just this morning I read another arrow to the heart story in the Texas Observer by Josh Rosenblatt titled “Coming Home”. One phrase from it that has lingered in the front hall of my mind: ” . . .Like so many young people, they enlisted not out of any sense of duty or righteousness, but for the promise of $20,000 a year and a free college education.  They signed up for a way out.”  How pitiful is that?  We have allowed greedy swine to take control of our government and represent us and this is what they have created for us–an America where the path to opportunity for the majority of our young people is murder.  Eugene Ionesco could not have written a more absurd or cynical plot.

The article told of a story where a young American soldier who writes his family about discovering and disarming an IED planted on an Afghani family farm.  Rejecting cliches about patriotism and heroism, the young man admits that the impoverished farm owner who was dragged off to prison by American soldiers as a result of his efforts probably planted that IED because the Taliban had either given him an ultimatum or offered him more money than he could refuse.  Circumstances beyond that farmer’s control–war, poverty, history–had left him with no other option, the same way that circumstances beyond the young American soldier’s control had left him with no option but to enslist.

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ILWQ COMMENTS

Isn’t it time that we started creating better options for our children than murder?

This much I know:  Unless the majority of the 99% are willing to turn their backs on the majority of incumbents currently in the US Congress and run for office and/or campaign for Independents from the 99% who are  running for office in 2012, we will get nothing but more of the same.

If the current members of Congress haven’t shown you this by now, then you are asleep.

They will never change.

They must be replaced. And as many of them as possible.

And if you don’t like war then stop voting for either a Democrat or a Republican because all you have to do is look at the voting records and their stock portfolios to see how much they approve of it.

Proclaim the Queen!

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