Liberty and Freedom
Americans love to be patriotic. We like the pomp and circumstance of military ceremonies, the salute of arms, and the songs that resonate with the principles we love best: liberty and freedom. We have always been ready to defend our own homes, our own community, and the greater body that is a collection of diverse states: the United States of America. We have “peace-keeping” units in place, the police, the prison personnel, the National Guard, the Border Patrol, and all branches of the armed services who stand, at the ready, to protect and to defend American citizens. We are always prepared to safeguard liberty and freedom within our own borders.
Most Americans understand well what has just been stated. However, a majority of Americans are increasingly overwhelmed with a despondency over current political decisions that seem to be unilateral in nature, delivered in a repulsive “Father Knows Best” framework.
Albert Einstein, known for his keen insights and discoveries and his ability to think, once stated that Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and somehow expecting a different outcome.
Whenever the war in “Vietnam” is mentioned, many refuse to see any analogy to the present situation in Iraq. It is true that there are no rice patties involved. The blood bath and the number of deaths strikes a similarity.
The reason I am writing about this war is that I passionately want the carnage to end, and I desperately want the United States to disengage from the sectarian conflict. I agree that we should never have entered this fray in the first place, but we really need to start sending troops back home, as quickly as is feasible. This war is insane. THERE IS NOTHING TO WIN. The goal seems to be to preserve one man’s ego, a man who would like to prove his decisions to be right.
More and more these days, I have been recalling the words of anti-war songs from the 1960s – my own point of reference. One of them, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” was translated into German – “Sagt Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind.” As I think of those sad words, I ask, “How much longer? How many more young men and young women, America’s promise for the future, will die in such a strange and bizarre land?” Sometimes, their lives are gone without a moment’s notice, blown away by some land mine.
I am as patriotic as anyone else, if not more so. There is no incongruence between wanting the troops home and my own feelings of dedication to home and patriotic fervor for country. Our leader is not listening to the will of the people, and that makes me exceedingly sad and distraught.
A Washington Post article on January 24, 2007 by Harold Meyerson summed up the situation well: http://tinyurl.com/yqe2gl
Patricia
