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George Bush Says My Friend Might Have To Die
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Patricia
Dear BuzzFlash,
Here I sit the morning after my friend told me last night that he has been told he is going to Kuwait. He is in the reserves and had been led to believe he would be kept stateside when he was called. Hell, I've cried till I'm sick. I've cried for my friend, his wife, his children and his grandchildren. He is my friend and he's also a symbol of every man and woman who is being forced away from their lives and their loves to go and participate in a war like this country has, to my knowledge, never entered into before. A war of, in my opinion, greed and deception.
I have never before hugged someone and told them good-bye as they went off to war. Jesus that hurts! It hurts down deep inside with a kind of pain that I have never felt before. It's pain all tangled up with anger and confusion. It's a different kind of hurt than when you lose a loved one to death ..........I guess this is more like the hurt one might feel as they kiss a loved one goodbye thinking that perhaps their loved one is going to the death chamber for a crime they did not comment. This is hurt in anticipation of unjust pain and death.
There is nothing you can think of that can, in anyway, balance out the hurt. There just is no reason for this.....no just reason at all. I'm not mad at my country, I'm mad at the leaders of my country. I see other men and women on TV telling their loved ones good-bye as they ship out and I hear them saying that, "it's an honor to serve their country" etc., but I just can't believe that they also mean it's an honor to leave and possibly die for reasons based purely on speculation. Speculation with nothing, absolutely nothing to substantiate the claims by this administration.
This war is being waged because a bunch of people in Washington feel that it's what "they" want to do. If that isn't dictatorship, what the hell is? As my friend was telling me good-bye last night and assuring me that he "would be back", I was looking at his face, listening to his voice and trying to record it all in my head. As I was telling him that I knew he was right, he would definitely be back and that we would all be waiting for him, there was a third voice silently translating our unspoken words between us. The translation that I was hearing told me that my friend was really saying, "I'm scared as hell. I never thought it would come to this. I don't want to go over there. I don't want to die. I don't believe in this war. I think it's all bullshit. I, for the first time in my life see death as a very real possibility."
Likewise, my friend was silently hearing me say, "oh god they can't take you away like this. I never thought it would come to this. I don't want you to go over there......it's so damn dangerous. I don't want you to die, I can't even fathom how much that would hurt. I don't believe in this war and I don't believe a word I hear from Washington. I think it's all bullshit. And as I look at you and hug you tight and try to record in my head the sound of your voice, the intensity in your eyes and the bravado humor we're both using to avoid the deep and intense pain of this moment, I for the first time realize that you might not come back. And if you don't come back I know that I will never ever be able to justify your death and I also know that this moment will forever hurt."
If there is such a thing as a justifiable war it is, at best, inhumane and despicable. A war such as this one which is, by almost anyone's account, unjustifiable is a nightmare come to life. We won't wake up and this monster will have left our lives, this monster, this war is real but the rationale behind it is not.
I've heard all the rhetoric about weapons of mass destruction and how we have to do whatever we have to do etc............but I haven't heard a damn word about the most visible weapon of mass destruction: this administration as they send thousands overseas to kill and be killed. How many deaths does it take to qualify for "mass destruction"? Will my friend come home safe and sound? God I hope so! If he doesn't will I ever be able to forgive George Bush Jr. and his cohorts? I doubt I'll ever even really try because it's nearly impossible to forgive someone who will lie and cause your friends to die!
Yours truly, Patricia
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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