4,000

Yesterday, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq reached 4,000.

That's 4,000 lives cut short. 4,000 hearts that will never beat again. 4,000 families and groups of friends that will never be the same again. And for what? For a war that was sold based on lies that those who told them knew were lies. For preemptive war, the idea that you can get rid of a threat before it becomes a threat, the most dangerous theory of modern times. For vengeance, against people who had nothing to do with what we seek vengeance for.

But that's not what the president wants you to think about. He wants you to think of Iraq as the next great proving ground of Democracy; the next step in our nation's legacy, in the yet-unfinished Grand Experiment begun by our founding fathers in a hot, cramped room in early July, 1776. He wants you to think of the Iraqi people suffering under the rule of a ruthless dictator, who does not think twice about slaughtering them by the thousands; and he wants you to demand that we stay in Iraq, to ensure Democracy prevails there, fulfilling the responsibility we brought upon ourselves by toppling that dictator.

Everything else that the president says about the War in Iraq - that if we leave, the terrorists will follow us home; that Al Qaeda in Iraq is the physical manifestation of the greatest threat America has ever faced; that we should not be opposed to giving up certain liberties to purchase the safety supposedly bought by the war - is, quite frankly, thinly veiled bullshit. And the reason why he brings up the support of Democracy in reference to the Iraq War - because every other justification for the war he tried simply failed - leads me to the conclusion that the president doesn't personally believe his own words, and is only really promoting the war for his own personal benefit, which makes me sick to my stomach.

But that one single idea - that Iraq can become a part of America's legacy of Democracy, the place where the West faces off once and for all with this newest form of extremism - makes more and more sense to me every day.

If it is indeed true that Iraq is "our country's destiny" - as the president put it in his Memorial Day speech last year (which I vehemently attacked in this very blog) - then there is no doubt in my mind that we are going about it with the wrong mentality. We need to step back, and look past the immediate danger of Islamic terrorism, and into the soul of America. We need an Abraham Lincoln to tell us that the conflict we are in right now is just one part of a broader narrative - a narrative which we can, in some small way, shape. We need to resolve ourselves - not to "kill all the damn terrorists" and perpetuate the irrational ideas that brought us to Iraq in the first place - but to continue our pursuit of Liberty and Democracy, at home and throughout the world.

If we cannot bring ourselves to see that deeper conflict, and declare our intent to see that through, the war must end now. But if we can turn this tragedy into the next step of the Grand Experiment, perhaps the deaths of these 4,000 brave men and women can be worth something.

President Bush and Memorial Day Stupidity

In an earlier post on my blog, I detailed my belief that the real way to support American soldiers would be to bring them home. I denounced the idea that we must "finish the job" in order to make their sacrifices worthwhile.

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking still saturates the country, as evidenced by president Bush's speech today at the Arlington National Cemetery.

In the midst of all the proper honoring of the men and women who have served our country now and in the past, Bush couldn't help but insert a political message. "Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics," he said. "They know that one day this war will end, as all wars do. Our duty is to make sure this war was worth the sacrifice."

No, Mr. Bush. Your duty, and the duty of the government that you are a part of, is to refrain from using war as an instrument of foreign policy except where it is absolutely necessary. Your duty is to make it so that the only causes that you will send the young men and women of this country to die for are ones that are inherently "worth the sacrifice."

And, Mr. Bush, your duty most certainly is not to start an invasion of a sovereign nation on false pretenses, only later changing your justification to this pursuit of freedom and democracy that so many of the people blindly rally behind you on. Your duty is to tell the full, unabridged truth when the lives of this nation's young people are on the line.

"This is our country's calling," Bush said. "It's our country's destiny."

Mr. Bush, never reduce the destiny of America, as defined by the founding fathers as well as every man, woman, and child who has ever lived here, to being a massive industrial-military machine that invades sovereign nations without international support, and pushes entire regions of the world into total chaos. Never reduce the 'great experiment' of freedom and democracy to being a monster that feeds on the spirit of the world - the very spirit that made it possible. Never reduce the land of the free and the home of the brave to being the land of the aggressor and the home of the fearful. That is not our destiny. That is not America.

Bush said that this nation's freedoms "came at a great cost and they will surive only so long as there are those who are willing to protect them." At last, Mr. Bush, you speak some truth. But you are not one who has been known to protect our freedoms, Mr. Bush. Your PATRIOT Act makes it possible for entire sections of the Bill of Rights to be tossed aside if investigators think it will help them. Of 814,073 people charged in immigration courts under your Department of Homeland Security in the past three years, only 12 faced terrorism charges, and only 114 were charged with national security violations. That means that only one and a half hundredths of a percent of those 'dangerous' people being processed through the sketchy methods of the DHS are actually a concern at all.

I am ashamed of our country if we accept and embrace Bush's mantra. America has always been dedicated to freedom and democracy, and everyone agrees that the men and women who have died serving our nation throughout its history are noble. But now Bush, quite possibly the biggest internal threat to freedom, democracy, and our men and women in uniform in the history of America, is able to use his 'support' of those things to make himself and his war look good. What has America come to, if he can do that?

Perhaps there is still a small glimmer of hope for our country in this debacle: As Bush's motorcade passed over the Potomac River, it went by a lone man holding a sign that said "Bring our troops home." Amen. Amen.