Thoughts About The War Part One

I posted an info chart on Iraq, running down some facts I found interesting. The first time I was introduced to that list, I was taking part in a debate between pro and anti war students. Some were in ROTC on the conservative side, some were getting into it for the first time, and on the other side were just interested students and some staff. I used it, and after reading it aloud, both sides issued their displeasure with my reading it. In fact, every time I've told someone about it they've said the same thing: What does that matter? Why is that relevant?

The reason it is relevant is the same reason why Cindy Sheehan is camped out in Texas: truth and facts are important when you are discussing something of great importance, especially when you're making a decision.

Most of the people that I was on the panel with graduated, most going into the military to serve. In a war where the forward areas are claiming lots of lives, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a lot of these kids that I knew have either been injured or killed.

Their parents are not crybabies. My friends are not crybabies. No one who wants to mourn the loss of their family, blood or spiritual, should be told that they are complaining. The issue of whether or not life is tough is irrelevant and selfish, regardless of who asks. Loss is loss, and just because someone with no human stake in the war sees it as an acceptable fate doesn't mean that other people do, and asking why they died does not mean that they seek the country's destruction. Assertion of anything to the contrary is cruel, mean, and unacceptable.

What IS acceptable is a search for answers that isn't stymied by those in power. Mothers who want answers shouldn't be ridiculed because they desire resolution. Ultimately we should be asking what's wrong with US if we can't understand why it's going on and are unwilling to ask.
In my life, I want to be considered a radical. I say radical because the Latin meaning defines radicals as those who seek the root of the problem or cause. Radicals are often in danger because truth is, in many different ways, expensive. In fact, most would say that it is worth a life. People also say that radicals are dangerous, and I agree. But what I don't agree with is labelling any dangerous fool a radical. True radicals accept no answer as definitively true without study, leaving most of them to spend their lives questioning everything, living in uncertainty. But in that uncertainty I think there's pleasure in knowing the truth, and that for me is what's most important.

To tie things all together, we as a society are trained to be afraid of the truth. Our government has a vested interest, at this point, in keeping us this way. The system, democracy, goes right against this trend in the way that systems are supposed to: just by existing, democracy gives us a choice.

So given the information available, you have a choice to make. Are you going to question what you're being told and use actual reason and logic to make a decision? Or will you blindly follow along? And the kicker is that by making this choice, you ultimately are deciding whether or not you are truly a good democratic citizen. Our founding fathers were patriots and citizens in the truest sense: they believed in being a true radical and using rebellion and dissent as a democratic tool, not supressing it. But they also knew the value of leadership and the relationship required in order for leadership to be truly valuable. But, most importantly, they wrote down what they thought and left it to be read, changed or destroyed as we saw fit because true freedom and democracy is shaped and molded to fit the container that is the governed population.