Sagittarius
Dear Laura and Jenna Bush,
As you promote your new children’s book, “Read All About It,” and advocate for literacy tonight, I hope you will take but a few moments to read these heartfelt lines.
I write to you as one of thousands of parents and family members whose loved ones have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan; whose child, parent or spouse has returned blinded or deaf, armless or legless, or unable to ever move their limbs again; or perhaps have returned apparently unharmed, but with nightmares and a ticking timebomb in their minds.
You may think this a grim postscript to an evening’s chat about a book for children, but when someone you love has been taken from you forever, or returned so terribly damaged you barely know them, it becomes foremost in your thoughts every waking moment. You then begin to understand what is truly grim. And, I must add, there are those among us who still carry such unspeakable pain and anger they’ve become all but exhausted.
But many of us have felt exhaustion be replaced by an energy and a clarity of purpose we have never experienced before. One thing that has become clear to us is an answer to the question, “How could anyone send the youth of its nation to invade Iraq?” We see now how differently someone would answer that question if they suffered the anguish of a family member being killed as the result.
Your children, Mrs. Bush, are safe and I am glad for you. But I wonder, have you ever urged them to enlist in this heroic adventure? Your husband has told us many times how important this cause is.
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Re: Would You Send Your Daughters To Iraq, Mrs. Bush?
By johnhatch, April 25, 2008 at 17:35I too feel for Gilda Carbanero and I think she makes a valid point. What 'The Commander-in-Chief' asks of young Americans he would excuse in his own daughters, just as he himself used his famiy's influence to avoid going to Viet Nam, and then to escape all consequences when he deserted. Some example.
Harvard drop-out Dick Cheney, also a La-Z-Boy Hawk on Viet Nam and Iraq received five draft deferrments to avoid going. He claimed to have 'other priorities' at the time. Another great example.
A lot of the young people signing up for Iraq are apparently still doing so for patriotic reasons, believing the lies that it's payback for Saddam's involvement in 9-11, or that if the 'terrorists' aren't fought 'over there' then they'll come to America. The offices of the President and the Vice President have been used to spread these lies. Also relatively large financial inducements have been used to get kids to sign up, and under 'No Child Left Behind' military recruiters are allowed to contact kids at school and even at home and use considerable persuasive skills (and frequently lies) to get them to sign up.
President Bush just recently stupidly said that if he were younger and not otherwise engaged, he might consider going to Afghanistan, describing it as 'romantic'. Young people should be inured to this sort of bullshit, that war and killing people is 'romantic' or 'cool'. They need to know that it's mind-numbing and soul destroying, and they should let no one talk them out of their one precious life. Informed consent should be required, not lies and romanticization. It's a romance the Bush daughters will surely forego. So should everyone else.
Re: Would You Send Your Daughters To Iraq, Mrs. Bush?
By Brandon, April 25, 2008 at 15:40It's next to impossible to argue with someone so closely and permanently affected by this foreign war.
Nevertheless it needs to be said that the Bush girls not being in Iraq is hardly a valid argument against the war. These two useless girls are incapable of holding a taco without soiling themselves let alone a machine gun, and everyone knows that rich muck-a-mucks rarely fight (interesting exception being the courageous Senator McCain)
Lots of Canadians have lost friends in Afghanistan. Our Prime Minister probably didn't. That has NO bearing on whether the Taliban who routinely executed women for trying to read needed to be culled. Many Americans and Britons and other people have lost loved ones because of the brutality of war - others have lost none - none of this has anything to do with whether or not the CAUSE of war is just or worthwhile. Too often the debate gets dragged down by the emotional impact of death.
The war will be over in a few years. The tyranny that reigned over that middle part of the world for a thousand years will never again alight any throne, and the sacrifice of every son and daughter will have its fruit in the freedom of an entire people.
By saying so, I know that I invite the wrath of those who disagree. But it is a world of opinions, once vastly disparate and now seeming to belong to only two sides. War does this. It polarizes everything. It always has.