I remember, as a kid, listening to Walter Cronkite reading off the list of war casualties every night. Playing with my trucks or flipping through a comic book, I just figured that was the way things were: war was just something that went on. I had no sense of a beginning of the war, since I was too young to remember it starting. So, war had just simply always been there. And, at age ten, I barely acknowledged the horrendous nightly counting of the dead. I was wholly ambivalent to the tens of thousands of servicemen who lost their lives in the jungles of Vietnam.
At the start of the Iraq war, a fallen American soldier would have been worthy of network program interruption. Eventually, dead American servicemen were relegated to alert banners across the bottom of our screens. Nine U.S. servicepeople were killed Saturday, and unless you were watching the news, you wouldn’t know about it.
Can you imagine 156 Americans being killed on city streets in a single day? Probably not. If something like that happened, everything in the country would come to a halt. The news would be saturated with 24-hour coverage. Schools and shopping malls would close. Shock would grip the nation.
It’s a real shame we don’t value Iraqi lives as much as we do American lives. Saturday, on what would have been Saddam Hussein's 70th birthday, a car bomb in Karbala killed or injured dozens near a holy shrine. Five Red Crescent workers were shot dead in Baghdad. Dumped bodies were found in Baghdad, Mosul, Mahmudiya, Baquba and Mahaweel as well. Overall, 156 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 164 Iraqis were wounded in violent attacks throughout Baghdad. Nine American GIs were also reported killed in three separate incidents. And none of us cancelled any trips to the shopping mall.
On May 1st, 2003, President George W. Bush landed on the deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and, in front of a giant banner emblazoned MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, declared, “Major combat operations have ended.” Six month later he would deny that his staff had hung the banner there, though there’s little doubt they had.
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007, will be the 1,480th day since President George W. Bush declared “Mission accomplished” in Iraq. It will, likely, also be the day the president vetoes a spending bill written to fund the war. The $124.2 billion bill requires troop withdrawals to begin Oct. 1, or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The House passed the measure Wednesday by a 218-208 vote. Bush has set benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but has steadfastly opposed attaching any timeframe to them or requiring any actions if they are not met.
Which, of course, means the benchmarks have no teeth. The Iraqi “government,” headed by Shiite Muslim Nouri al-Maliki, lacks much influence in its own country absent the threat of American guns. Al-Maliki has a contentious relationship with President Bush, and seems complicit in the ongoing Iraqi civil war. Maliki perhaps tacitly favors the Shiite majority’s turn towards ethnic cleansing of Sunnis and Kurds. By most objective standards, Maliki seems to be playing America for a sucker: raking in cash while not doing much of anything to stem the violence in Iraq or lessen Iraq’s dependence on U.S. military strength. It’s as if Maliki simply intends to run out the clock, banking on a collapse of American will to widen his opportunity to widen the Shiite-Sunni conflict with the goal of total Shiite domination of the country.
In this view, America simply continues pouring good money after bad, with the president perhaps obsessed, in Lyndon Johnson fashion, with shoring up his legacy of a failed presidency. Obsessed, perhaps, to the point where he’s willing to sacrifice many more American lives—and certainly thousands more Iraqi lives—just so history won’t treat him harshly. Which is all that much sadder considering history has already judged this president, who ranks among the worst presidents in American history.
On Christmas day, December 25, 2006, the total number of U.S. military deaths from the Iraq War equaled and surpassed the 2973 total deaths on 9/11. As of this writing, 3,346 Americans have died as a result of the Iraq war. 24,912 have been reported wounded, though estimates report number nearly four times that. Iraqi civilians killed in this war are estimated at a minimum of 62,570.
George W. Bush has caused, at minimum, 20 *times* as many deaths as Osama bin Laden. Who, by the way, remains at large.
The president has made the world a *much* more dangerous place, mainly by ignoring North Korean madman Kim Jong Il and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both of whom—clearly benefiting from America’s Iraq malaise—have openly defied U.N. resolutions in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the very claim we used to justify our invasion of Iraq. History has already judged George W. Bush, who’s placed only 20,000 troops n Afghanistan—where Osama bin Laden is— and 170,000 troops in Iraq—where Osama bin Laden is not.
The president is fighting a losing war. If not the war in Iraq (though that certainly seems militarily unwinnable), the president has certainly lost the war for the hearts and minds of the American people. He seems foolish and myopic, stubborn and simply lost.
As Christians, our task is to pray for the president. Pray that God would lead him, would inspire him and keep him safe. President Bush has alluded to the notion God inspired him to invade Iraq, which makes me wonder which god the president prays to, as the Bible tells us God is not the author of confusion. Nor would God lie to us about weapons of mass destruction. God inspires us to humility, to selflessness. This is a president who refuses to admit mistakes or accept blame. A president who exhibits few if any qualities of a loving, all-wise God.
I suppose my greatest sadness and bitterness might be directed toward those people who put him in office—our brothers and sisters in the conservative Christian right wing. As much as I complain about how black folks don’t read, the truth is, white folk don’t read much more than we do. Ignorance is ignorance, and ignorance in civic action—rallying support for Bush/Cheney over issues like stem cell research [which Bush has done nothing about] or gay marriage [which Bush has done nothing about]—just makes you an easy mark. White Christian conservatives simply put their intellect on hold and ignored the horrific wrongness of this war, voting the president back in out of ignorance, fear, and a desire to beat the godless Democrats. They bought into empty promises and gay bigotry, allowing Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to play on their fears rather tan appeal to their hope. And, for that, these folks need to be deeply ashamed. Ashamed even more to call themselves “Christians” while pulling the lever for George W. Bush.
On this anniversary of the Iraq war, I do pray for my president. I try to pray without bias, without anger. But the overwhelming sadness of lives lost—now and, certainly, in years to come—inhibits my efforts to seek God’s favor on behalf of our leaders. This war is a shameful business. This country has shameful leaders.
For every family, for every loved one of those who selflessly give of themselves in the service of their country, may the peace of God, that brings salvation, comfort and abide with you. May God cause His divine face to shine upon you. May His Holy Spirit comfort you, enrapture you with His love. God of mercy, bring our young men, our young women, home safely.
