Going off to war....

A young friend of mine recently announced that he plans to join the National Guard. He made this announcement on a forum, and recieved a range of replies from encouragement and "'atta boy" comments to attempts to dissuade him, or at least get him to think about it.

This young man is 17 years old, and as far as I know, has not even finished high school yet (I believe he graduates in June). Both of his parents have serious health issues that could very well end their lives early, and long before this young man marries or has children for them to bounce on their knees.

So why would he risk losing the precious time he has left with them, not to mention risking his own life, to join the Guard during a war?

He claims it's because he loves his country, and will do "anything" to protect it, and those he loves.

That's a laudable sentiment. Unfortunately, like so many others in America, my young friend has been bamboozled by the propaganda we've all been fed. The war in Iraq is not about "protecting" America. It's not even about protecting the Iraqi's from Saddam. It certainly wasn't about all the things that were claimed in the beginning (WMD's, connections to Bin Laden, nukes, etc.).

How is it that even after all those claims were proven to be nothing more than hype, and after more than 3000 American lives have been lost, as well as countless thousands of innocent Iraqi's lives - that any of our young men and women can still think that signing up for THIS war is in any way "protecting" America, or their families?

I know, I know....we were attacked. As a New Yorker, I am reminded of that every time I see the glaring hole in our skyline, or see a cop or fireman, or travel on a street that's been renamed for one of the victims of that awful attack. I can never forget that day, or how it felt to watch those buildings come down. I can't forget the fear I felt as I rushed to my son's school to bring him home, just in case it wasn't over yet, or trying to smile and reassure him as fighter jets flew over our heads on the walk back home. Nor can I forget being invited by a relative of a lost firefighter to visit the private memorial to the victims of 9/11, and seeing the thousands of pictures and notes left by those who loved and lost someone special that day.

But that was, if you can believe what we were told, the work of Osama and his terrorist group. It had nothing to do with Iraq, and that has been proven over and over again. Yet there are still far too many people in this country who refuse to believe that our President lied to us in order to convince us that we had a "right" to invade a sovereign nation, depose it's leadership, and leave it in ruins and on the verge of civil war.

I also remember watching Colin Powell make his speech to the UN. I remember the pictures he held up - showing trucks and buildings, but nothing that proved there were nukes, WMD's, or any other types of forbidden weaponry inside. Even then I thought the so-called "evidence" was very, very thin. So I was not surprised when the UN said no to Bush's request for an offensive. Nor was I surprised that Bush defied the UN and ordered us into a war we will never win anyway. And I certainly was not surprised when we found no such weapons, no nuclear devices or parts to make them, and no hidden terrorist cells.

In fact, it has been our invasion, occupation, and total lack of a workable plan for securing Iraq once Saddam was gone that has allowed the terrorists to get INTO Iraq. Sadly, that isn't a surprise either.

I was no fan of Saddam. He was a brutal dictator with no respect for the rights of his own citizens, or for the life of anyone who disagreed with him. I am glad he is dead. But I will never feel that our actions in Iraq were justified, or that our invasion of that nation was legally or morally correct, especially when it's likely that more Iraqi's have died at OUR hands than died under Saddam's rule.

But I bristle at the suggestion that this war has anything at all to do with "protecting" America or it's people. Not when the hunt for Osama has been virtually abandoned while Bush pursued his personal vendetta against Saddam. Certainly not when everything Bush has done since 9/11 has worked against America's best interests by making us a "most-hated nation" to so many other countries and cultures. Not when we've even turned against long-time allies (like the French) simply for having the guts to tell us when we are wrong.

For my young friend, I can only hope that he will come to his senses and stay out of the military until after Bush is out of office and, hopefully, the war in Iraq - or at least our role in it - is over. But I am afraid that won't be the case, and I am even more afraid that someday I will be writing that he was killed by some roadside bomb or sniper, or so-called "friendly fire", or perhaps by his own government's failure to provide our troops with effective and sufficient armor, etc. Or he could end up coming home without an arm or leg, or severely burned and disfigured, etc. In which case he'll be sent to a VA hospital where he will be lucky to - eventually - get sub-standard care.

Why have we allowed this to continue? Why is Bush still in office rather than being impeached? Why are we even considering sending more troops to Iraq instead of just bringing them home as fast as we can without leaving the Iraqi's defenseless? Sending more young men and women over there is just providing more targets for the insurgents and terrorists. You cannot fight a war with an invisible and undectable enemy. It just makes no logical sense.

In the 1970's, a group of esteemed thinkers, philosophers, teachers, and others got together to discuss their vision for the future of humanity. From those discussions, the Humanist Manifesto II was born. One of the items in the Manifesto states "War is obsolete".

It is a simple and yet profound statement of fact. War IS obsolete. Killing another human being over a piece of land, or a religious or political ideal, is stupid, wasteful, and endangers the future of humanity. We are not barbarians any more, or at least we shouldn't be. So why do we still choose to "solve" our problems through violence and death rather than through reason and cooperation?

Might (military or otherwise) does NOT make right. It never did.

What kind of world do I want?

• A world where war truly is obsolete, and no human being ever loses their life over something as worthless as a piece of land, a line on a map, a political ambition, or a religous ideology.
• A world where human beings use reason, science, logic, cooperation, and a sense of fairness to resolve their differences without violence or oppression.
• A world where our leaders can be trusted to act with integrity, to tell us the truth, and be held accountable when they fail to do the job they were entrusted with.