The ChiIndy Sheehan Thing

MoveOn sent an email this morning about the vigils around the country. We're all with her, right? But let's be clear about something:
A trip to Iraq is not a death sentence. There are a lot of our people over there. I guess we can't count the mercenaries/contractors. Only some are dead.

The personal notes in the email suggested horrible fears that loved ones slated to go away for a while will come to bodily harm. But of course they will! They're in the military, which gets involved with bodily harm as a workplace likelihood.

It's important that we look for a positive ingredient in this shit soup, if only to do a better job than the administration in honoring the fallen and maimed. Bush wants them coming home in the dark so no one notices. I want us all to think about them, and never forget the way life changes for someone when the shrapnel from an IED costs a leg, arm or penis. Life-changing. Like when Bush stopped snorting coke and falling down drunk to be a Jesus freak working for Armageddon.

I think you should remember the part of protest that transcends your personal situation and interest: This is a waste of your loved ones' time and misappropriation of their talent in addition to a hasty risk of their life, limbs, independence. Not because it's a money-making diversion to liberate Iraq, or because it has no bearing on our security, or even because the whole fiasco was built on a lie. It's a waste of time because our spoiled and indolent leadership, indifferent to our interests and above the fray, only visit us on TV from time to time to pat each other on the back, reinforce our fears, and change the subject from their lack of a plan (NOW DOCUMENTED: They knew they had insufficient planning!) and lack of a goal and lack of a reason and lack of talent. Their distraction in Iraq diverts valuable assets from our real offensive projects to the prosecution of the war, which ended over a year ago when the President landed on the aircraft carrier in his Buck Rogers pajamas.

He went us there because he could. He saw an opportunity, although it had to be spelled out in decades of Neocon writing. Politics is the art of the possible, and Bush had the domestic political capital to get away with it. The GOP will spin responsibility away from themselves, but his friends are getting filthy rich, just like his buddies at Enron did when they figured out a scam. But if Enron had Halliburton and the other military contractors subcontracted, California would be their property today.

Iraq: only a few thousand miles away from our enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea... Canada.