The Will of the People

"What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?"

You probably already know from Bruce's post last week that Andrew Bacevich lost his son in Iraq. I can't imagine what it must feel like to lose a child, and on top of the grief, what sort of anger must a war critic feel when such a loss occurs during a conflict that is both unnecessary and immoral? What sort of things might you say to console a man in such pain? You can't say he died for his country, when in fact he died for someone elses country. You can't say he died protecting our country, when we've established beyond any reasonable doubt, that there was no threat to America. You can't even say he died to save innocent lives, because the Iraqis are now busy killing each other and if we hadn't invaded and occupied Iraq, about 600,000 more of them would be alive today.

There is nothing true we can say today to console Andrew Bacevich.

What I can say today, is that the will of the people is being ignored, and that the people we elected to carry out our will have sadly disappointed us. Every soldier that dies, every civilian casualty, is some one's son or daughter, and there are no words we can use to make their deaths have meaning. We elected Democrats to end this war, and since they have chosen not to do so, what party can we elect to get the job done? The Greens? The Communists? Tell me who can stop this atrocity, and I will send them a check today. I swear, I won't send another dime to a Democratic candidate until a true effort is made to stop this atrocity, and someone can give Andrew Bacevich some true words of comfort.

If the Democrats can't stop the funding for this war, then we should stop theirs.

| +Save/Share | |