10 wasted years.

As I reflect on the 10 years of the Iraq War, what is most striking with respect to the war's enormous human toll , nearly one million dead, five million displaced, hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, untold misery is the twisting and false facts still being spread by our politicians and press.

Having seen my country grow more hawkish and less humane, I've come to be filled with  grief, and quiet fury that there seems to be no outlet for. I can write all I want but it holds no answers for me. It's baffling to me how we can go on endorsing this and other Middle Eastern wars and rallying for the military's safety when the numbers of American vs. Iraqi/Afghan casualties are so grossly disproportionate. I can't comprehend how the vast majority of my countrymen have come to conclude that the life of a person born to out nation is somehow more valuable than that of a person who was born to a distant country.
I desperately want this war to end, but I know that that would be nothing but a too-little-too-late reasons we did this to these people.. An official ending won't resurrect all of those innocent lives, and it won't undo the  hatred that has become America's new patriotism. After ten years in, there seems to be no real way out. We have created a mess and will never be able to fix it. We will leave and abandon the people to destruction and death that we have brought with us,

It is very true, that most of these atrocities aren't brought to light at all, mostly because the men like Bush and Cheney, were well to aware of what the reality of war would bring to this nation. I find it fitting, on the 45th anniversary of My Lai massacre in Vietnam, that the Bush adminitration took that incident as a lesson to make sure war reality photos and videos never make it to the general public. Those photos showed Americans what was really going on in Vietnam, which turned the tide of the war, and the American's support for it. Bush, Cheney and the Neocons wanted to be sure that didn't happen again. They made what was happening over there just that...it's over there, nothing our couch potato public would see on TV or other media...because if no one knows what's going on over there, it's easier for the public not to care.

I remember having a discussion with a peer early in the war. I told her of my concerns and she said to me ,"won't they be happier in the end because they have their freedom"?  I looked at her and said "Maybe the ones alive,but I doubt it.

  Funny, I recall nearly an entire nation behind Bush at the time, both sides of the aisle, and dissenters were shamed into compliance over it. People like to forget where they stood many years ago. Personally, I am glade I knew enough history and facts and stood against this war the whole time. Iraq never was our enemy. They were just a pawn used to keep the balance of power.