The Iraqi "Withdrawl" and Continued Occupation

On a spring day in 2003, the day before my birthday, I awoke to another gorgeous Florida morning, got some breakfast together and sat down in front of the news. The U.S. had been in Iraq for less than a month and I was surprised to be greeted to the sight of a dozen or more Iraqi men, pulling down a statute of Saddam Hussein and beating it with their shoes in a public square. A few weeks earlier, I had mornfully watched the U.S. drop bombs on Baghdad and wondered aloud how my country could be so eager to rush into war. Didn't we know first hand the desvastation of loss of life? But now, watching these men's joy at berating their deposed leader, I wondered if maybe I was wrong--that indeed this war was a different kind of war, a war of principle, quick and necessary.

Six years later, as U.S. troops wearily make their way out of Iraqi's major cities and towns and al Maliki calls for an Iraqi independence day of sorts, I know better. Too many horrible things have happened between the Iraqi sandals-on-statute and sandals-at-President for me to feel even a little bit smug. This war was entirely our own, our rich have profited from it the same as any war. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the devastation we have caused in so many lives. There was no moral, no lesson. We have built nothing but greed and resentment.

At the time, I wondered how my Floridian town (the very same one from which the war was run, as a matter of fact) could be so casual in its endorsement of war, but now I know: I know that war brings politicans easy power and prestige, but most of all, easy money through no-bid contracts. I know that the lives of individuals in a foreign land will never register as the slightest bit important if our own people's lives are so casually thrown away through poor planning and poor budgeting. I know that democracy requires constant vigilance against arrogant and cruel leadership, and I wonder if human beings even posssess this ability.

And now, as the U.S. prepares to move its troops to the outliers of Iraq and beef up forces in Afghanistan, I know there is no such thing as responsible goverment. It is the people that must be responsible and press their leaders towards the same. If we fail in that duty, we have failed in everything.