It is extremely frustrating for me to continuously hear and read of soldiers getting killed “over there.” I keep asking myself, “for what?” No one, as of yet, has been able to explain it to me. We’ve lost 2,025 lives, not to mention the tens of thousands that will bear some painful reminder for the rest of their lives in the form of a loss of limb or other disfiguring wound.
Sad to say, for the last few months, I’ve grown weary of reading the daily stories coming out of Iraq and have stopped reading mostly because I don’t want to add to life’s customary burdens with more tales of grief – it just wears me down. It’s apparent that other recent tragedies (hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides etc.) have taken my mind off the “war on terror.” If I put my Christian and Catholic teachings to practice and truly believe that we are all brothers and sisters, then I start feeling wiped out by all the grief that’s been heaped on us all by the destruction and senseless loss of life. As much as I subconsciously bury this war story in one of the closets of my mind, my church reminds me at least weekly of it. As far I can remember, this has been one of the constant prayers presented (each week since the start of the war) during the prayer petitions of the faithful that we all answer to and pray, “Lord, hear our prayer, “ or “Lord, graciously hear us.”
I was reminded of the war this past Sunday while lectoring at Mass. Of the six prayers listed that I was to read the third one was a prayer for the safety of our troops and an end to the war. When I reached this prayer and locked on to the 2000 figure (it's now at 2,025) of soldiers that died, I momentarily froze and found it hard to continue. It was almost as if someone was telling me that I had forgotten about them. I’ve read and heard this prayer more than a hundred and fifty times but Sunday morning it seemed to have a different meaning for me. Since then, I started questioning as to why we only pray for our dead. What about all the innocent men, women and children that have died in Iraq? Estimates that have recently been released puts this figure at over 25, 000. Aren’t they also our brothers and sisters? Wednesday is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day), let us remember ALL who have died and pray for them and their loved ones.
The other prominent news story that weaves with the war on terror story is the indictment of “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s go to guy. Libby was one of the key architects in building the White House's case for going to war against Iraq. Now it seems he’s being fingered for outing the name of a covert CIA officer (Valerie Plame) after her husband questioned publicly one of the central justifications for the war in Iraq.
The more I read of this story the more I keep asking myself, why did President Bush put our troops in harm’s way? Also unanswered is the specific question that led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor two years ago, namely who gave Plame's name to the conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, named her as a CIA agent. Plame's husband, a career diplomat, Joseph Wilson 4th, went to Niger in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Wilson reported back that the uranium story was unfounded. But Vice President Dick Cheney's team kept on pushing the claim, which was included in President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech in 2003. Wilson then went public with his information.
Unless I’m naïve, it’s evident that Joe Wilson was a fly in Cheney’s soup and decided to take care of him by exposing his wife and discrediting the information provided by the CIA. It’s also evident that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so why were Americans and the world told that these weapons existed? I’m still waiting for Congress to give me an answer to as why are we at war. And who is responsible for all this senseless loss of life.
I don’t know about you, but how can anyone not think of the 2,025 young men and women that lost their lives at the hands of an administration that won’t give you a valid reason. Why are we still there? To lose more lives?
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