women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-i

In reading the personal stories of young men and women returning from Iraq, I am struck by the depth to which all of them have been changed. I grieve, with them, the lost friends and comrades, and I grieve for them the lost relationships when they return home.

It has always been this way for America, at least for close to one hundred years. When we offer up yet another generation of our young to serve in foreign lands, we do so with little consideration of the consequences. I’m not writing of only the body count--the lives lost or irretrievably altered by serious injury--but the lives so changed that the people most loved by those in service of the United States military are changed, too. Too often, it is simply not possible to take up where things were. In this case, I am writing more of the National Guard units called to active duty, those young men and women who had only been dedicating a weekend now and again but had been called to war, yet I imagine the situation for many regular Army and Marine units is similar.

The difference, while one of scale and not one of the level of difficulty, is that the regular military forces are living the day-to-day life of a soldier, Marine, airman, or Navy enlistee. I don’t pretend for an instant that it is easier for the spouse, girlfriend, or family of a Marine to see them depart for Iraq, What is different is that, for some years, our reserve military members have not been called up. They are just as eligible, but the shock of it, the disruption of lives, is even more abrupt.

Imagine, for a moment, that time in your life when you were in your late teens or early twenties, still figuring out what you wanted to do, who you wanted to work to become. Now, imagine being lifted as if by a set of giant fingers grabbing you by the shirt collar, and dropped in Iraq.

Here’s your weapon. Here are your orders for today. Good luck.

Repeat 200 times or more. See friends die violent deaths. Feel the fear that only those in deathly peril feel.

In too many cases, feel the pain of uncertainty when you shoot someone. Were they really the enemy? How can you know for sure, when it is their country, not yours?

Now, come home, your tour over. Pure relief, right?

The time you sleep is the hardest, because you cannot tamp down those horrible memories then. Just as bad, no one at home gets it, no one can fully understand except the guys you went over there with, or the guys who have been there in other conflicts.

If you are truly lucky, you are blessed with relationships that survive this aftermath of the terrible experience most see it as, when they are asked to kill other human beings regardless of the reason. Maybe a few beers at the veteran’s hall can ease the transition when it is too painful.

The less fortunate comprise two groups, for the most part: either you are unable to find peace in a way that makes your civilian relationships even possible any longer, or you desire more than anything the opportunity to kill again.

I know this to the depth of my soul: neither of these groups deserve the price they are paying. America has done a really lousy job caring for the very people we require to serve, to sacrifice even their lives, to a purpose that has now been clearly understood as not how it was originally portrayed by our own leaders.

Nothing is more hurtful than to witness so much suffering by America’s new “best and brightest.”

Always, I am drawn back to a question that is central to the elimination of all of this needless death: To What Good Purpose? I hear some say, “well, we have to WIN!”, and I have yet to hear a clear explanation as to what that means. How do you ‘win’ when you are fighting people who live in the country you are striving to help? When you are the target of so much of the violence? When you are the magnet of the fundamentalists who journey from around the world for the chance to martyr themselves as they kill you?

‘Winning’ is something the Cardinals just did in the World Series…what Italy did in the World Cup a few months back. ‘Winning’ is not a concept that makes any sense when discussing American involvement in Iraq. Most saddening are those who feel that, because they paid a high price, other young men and women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-im

e and not one of the level of difficulty, is that the regular military forces are living the day-to-day life of a soldier, Marine, airman, or Navy enlistee. I don’t pretend for an instant that it is easier for the spouse, girlfriend, or family of a Marine to see them depart for Iraq, What is different is that, for some years, our reserve military members have not been called up. They are just as eligible, but the shock of it, the disruption of lives, is even more abrupt.

Imagine, for a moment, that time in your life when you were in your late teens or early twenties, still figuring out what you wanted to do, who you wanted to work to become. Now, imagine being lifted as if by a set of giant fingers grabbing you by the shirt collar, and dropped in Iraq.

Here’s your weapon. Here are your orders for today. Good luck.

Repeat 200 times or more. See friends die violent deaths. Feel the fear that only those in deathly peril feel.

In too many cases, feel the pain of uncertainty when you shoot someone. Were they really the enemy? How can you know for sure, when it is their country, not yours?

Now, come home, your tour over. Pure relief, right?

The time you sleep is the hardest, because you cannot tamp down those horrible memories then. Just as bad, no one at home gets it, no one can fully understand except the guys you went over there with, or the guys who have been there in other conflicts.

If you are truly lucky, you are blessed with relationships that survive this aftermath of the terrible experience most see it as, when they are asked to kill other human beings regardless of the reason. Maybe a few beers at the veteran’s hall can ease the transition when it is too painful.

The less fortunate comprise two groups, for the most part: either you are unable to find peace in a way that makes your civilian relationships even possible any longer, or you desire more than anything the opportunity to kill again.

I know this to the depth of my soul: neither of these groups deserve the price they are paying. America has done a really lousy job caring for the very people we require to serve, to sacrifice even their lives, to a purpose that has now been clearly understood as not how it was originally portrayed by our own leaders.

Nothing is more hurtful than to witness so much suffering by America’s new “best and brightest.”

Always, I am drawn back to a question that is central to the elimination of all of this needless death: To What Good Purpose? I hear some say, “well, we have to WIN!”, and I have yet to hear a clear explanation as to what that means. How do you ‘win’ when you are fighting people who live in the country you are striving to help? When you are the target of so much of the violence? When you are the magnet of the fundamentalists who journey from around the world for the chance to martyr themselves as they kill you?

‘Winning’ is something the Cardinals just did in the World Series…what Italy did in the World Cup a few months back. ‘Winning’ is not a concept that makes any sense when discussing American involvement in Iraq. Most saddening are those who feel that, because they paid a high price, other young men and women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-i

or sure, when it is their country, not yours?

Now, come home, your tour over. Pure relief, right?

The time you sleep is the hardest, because you cannot tamp down those horrible memories then. Just as bad, no one at home gets it, no one can fully understand except the guys you went over there with, or the guys who have been there in other conflicts.

If you are truly lucky, you are blessed with relationships that survive this aftermath of the terrible experience most see it as, when they are asked to kill other human beings regardless of the reason. Maybe a few beers at the veteran’s hall can ease the transition when it is too painful.

The less fortunate comprise two groups, for the most part: either you are unable to find peace in a way that makes your civilian relationships even possible any longer, or you desire more than anything the opportunity to kill again.

I know this to the depth of my soul: neither of these groups deserve the price they are paying. America has done a really lousy job caring for the very people we require to serve, to sacrifice even their lives, to a purpose that has now been clearly understood as not how it was originally portrayed by our own leaders.

Nothing is more hurtful than to witness so much suffering by America’s new “best and brightest.”

Always, I am drawn back to a question that is central to the elimination of all of this needless death: To What Good Purpose? I hear some say, “well, we have to WIN!”, and I have yet to hear a clear explanation as to what that means. How do you ‘win’ when you are fighting people who live in the country you are striving to help? When you are the target of so much of the violence? When you are the magnet of the fundamentalists who journey from around the world for the chance to martyr themselves as they kill you?

‘Winning’ is something the Cardinals just did in the World Series…what Italy did in the World Cup a few months back. ‘Winning’ is not a concept that makes any sense when discussing American involvement in Iraq. Most saddening are those who feel that, because they paid a high price, other young men and women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-i

rve, to sacrifice even their lives, to a purpose that has now been clearly understood as not how it was originally portrayed by our own leaders.

Nothing is more hurtful than to witness so much suffering by America’s new “best and brightest.”

Always, I am drawn back to a question that is central to the elimination of all of this needless death: To What Good Purpose? I hear some say, “well, we have to WIN!”, and I have yet to hear a clear explanation as to what that means. How do you ‘win’ when you are fighting people who live in the country you are striving to help? When you are the target of so much of the violence? When you are the magnet of the fundamentalists who journey from around the world for the chance to martyr themselves as they kill you?

‘Winning’ is something the Cardinals just did in the World Series…what Italy did in the World Cup a few months back. ‘Winning’ is not a concept that makes any sense when discussing American involvement in Iraq. Most saddening are those who feel that, because they paid a high price, other young men and women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-i

women just like them should continue to pay at least as much if not more. How sad to hear someone who has been blinded in war exclaim, “If we withdraw, my loss will have been for nothing.”

What if, my now-blind American compatriot, your sacrifice inspired others to seek to *prevent* similar sacrifice, not only for other Americans, but for all the people in the line of fire in Iraq? Would that not be an acceptable conclusion? What if we choose to protect young American lives by not sending them anywhere at all? What if we left the Iraqi conundrum to the Iraqis to figure out?

About 150 years ago, our country waged a most horrible war against itself. We divided families, pitting brother against brother in a war that saw millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans. What did we learn from that war that sacrificed an entire generation of Americans and set back our own development as a country at least 50 years?

Today, it would appear that any lessons learned from our own war internal to our borders have been lost. The one, single-most-important lesson that should remain? Nothing is gained from destroying ourselves. How did we learn it, assuming that we did? By going through with the mistake ourselves.

Now, we seek to prevent exactly the same kind of disastrous civil war in another country. Here’s the rub: it is not possible to prevent further violence by killing people. Violence begets violence. It really is just that simple. If you seek peace, lay down your weapons. You cannot get to the place you seek until you become what you seek. Be peace, if that is what you seek. If, by doing so, you place yourself at risk, leave that place! It’s not where you belong as you seek peace.

I won’t belabor the point, but I will repeat it for emphasis: You cannot prevent violence by killing people. You cannot promote peace by beating your opponents into submission. You cannot win a war and expect to find anything but rebellion in the future.

So, I leave you with this task: please explain to your own God or to your own Highest Self or to whatever you term your own Greater Being how it is that you are pursuing the highest and best good for our planet when you are killing other human beings. I’d love to hear what you experience as a result of attempting this explanation.

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