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Sept. 8, 2004 I do not like to fly but I love to travel. So when I found myself with more time than sense I bought a thirty foot motor home. This boat on wheel is not a grand affair comparatively speaking. If you look there are motor homes out there that cost more than a quarter million dollars. And those, my friends, are truly grand affairs; with amenities like washers that dry your clothes and rooms that expand to mansion like proportions. I don’t have one of those, what I have is one where I get to rub against my wife as I pass her going from the front to the back. I like rubbing against my wife, in passing and with serious intent. I have over the years by hitch hiking, driving and now cruising , been in just about every state and have seen many, many towns where the whole thing seems to be nothing more than a stop light, a convenience store that doubles as a gas station and a post office. In some cases the post office was so small it was a government purchased used single wide trailer. If you’ve never seen a town that small go to Henry Virginia. The population of Henry, which is thriving, is about two hundred. It also seems as if the predominate feature of every small place I have seen is the church. Be it Baptist, Mormon, Presbyterian, Catholic, Methodist or whatever, the steeple is usually the tallest edifice next to the water tower. Both are in competition to serve the community but the church usually wins for the shiniest most well taken care of. Yesterday I was watching the news and heard that we hit a benchmark in the current administrations war in Iraq. A war started to make us safer, they say. A thousand American children have now died in that place of sand and fury. I got to thinking about me and my still being alive to drive my motor home through places like Henry. And the body count of a thousand compared to the population of Henry. Five times the population of Henry has been destroyed, never to roam the country to find a town where one can go and visit and relax and raise a family. Five Henry’s have gone down to the place of sleep, fighting a war that was begun to remove a dictator that had no weapons of mass destruction, that had no capacity to make any weapons of mass destruction. The given reason for going to war in Iraq was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction so this country would not be attacked like the terrible attack of 9/11/01. Yesterday the body count of 9/11 had added to it another thousand of the best of America. And Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. secretary of Defense had this to say about that; "When combined with U.S. losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already," Rumsfeld said. "And we certainly honor the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in uniform who has served in Iraq and who is currently serving there." (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&e=2&u=/washpost/20040908/ts_washpost/a2721_2004sep7) (1) and George Bush, the commander in chief, had this to say: "No matter how many times Senator Kerry flip-flops, we were right to make America safer by removing Saddam Hussein from power." While a white house spokesman said: "We remember, honor and mourn the loss of all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending freedom," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040908/ts_nm/iraq_dc&e=1) (2) So I would like to ask Rumsfeld, McClellan and the president; how do we honor these men and women and how do we mourn their loss? With a name on a wall? A piece of bronze shaped into a statue? And where do we place the thing, which town gets to be the keeper of this memory? And finally is this more than simply a way for the president to again attack his opponent who said about the benchmark: "Of all the wrong choices that President Bush has made, the most catastrophic choice is the mess that he has made in Iraq," Kerry told a town hall meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina.(2) And "We must never forget the price they have paid," Kerry said. "And we must meet our sacred obligations to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible." (1) This is more than a campaign issue, this is the life of America and her children. The overriding concern here is the troops still alive in the war zone, a constitutionally illegal war zone I might add seeing as there has been no formal declaration of war from the congress. When will they come back to us? When will the administration quit spending the lives of our young in a place that should have been left in quarantine, while the focus should be on them that actually perpetrated the attack on America? Osama bin Laden, holed up (we think) somewhere in on of our allied countries of either Pakistan or Afghanistan was the primary target, yet the nation was swayed towards Iraq. In Fairness there is a precedent for this and that is WWII. Japan attacked us in as horrible a way as bin Laden did, yet we focused on the European fight first. Japan had been aggressing throughout the Pacific Rim for well over a dozen years and had conquered as many nations as Nazi Germany and had attacked us, yet we went first to fight primarily in Europe. The difference though is that Germany truly presented a clear and present danger to the United States and her interests, Iraq did not. We did not declare war on Germany, the Nazi government declared war on us, Iraq did not. Saddam Hussein was a paper tiger, Hitler was not and neither is bin Laden. Yet now we are truly mired down in a place even the optimistic among the administration say will take years before our children will quit dieing there. It will be years before them who do not add to the body count can come home to travel to small towns like Henry Virginia. ------------ About the author: Mark C. Durfee is an independent conservative liberal hedonist Christian Bhuddist deveotee of Krishna who follows no crowds and who thinks that the Viagra commercial with Freddy Mercury singing while a bunch of men dance is funny. His novels are nothing like his articles and they cannot be found at Barnes and Noble or Walden books, Amazon.com or your local independent bookstore because he has not been discovered. His favorite saying is "Duck!!! That drive-by may have your name on it!" Email: mcd5255@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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