Some of you have said I am not in the right state of mind, maybe you’re right. Some of the things I’ve read on here made me angry. I’ve found myself angry at the war one minute, angry at Bush, just angry. Then I did some research and thought to myself about this all.
I understand some of your point of views, I do. What trigured my anger was something I read on here. I read something along the lines of …" 26 men already died and it’s been only 11 days, 26 lives wasted.." I cannot be exact on the words but they were something along those lines.
What angered me the most was, whoever this person was, they were saying that these Soldiers wasted their lives. Maybe your opinion is they did, but mine is they didn’t. There are many things I don’t like about this war, then there are things I agree.
I feel that most people focus on what’s wrong and they do not recognize what good deeds we have and will do. For example: The John Gebhardt story, google it. * He is a real Star of the war and is representative of what America is trying to do.
My opinion is different than others, and my intentions were not to lash out at people the way that I did. Reading that they wasted their lives upset me. In my opinion they did not, my brother nor the others who have died. I do think we should honor their name and some of you are doing that.
MeganBrooke,
I think the thought behind the words your read was that their lives are being wasted by those that they serve, Bush and Cheney. MadmanintheMarketplace made a good comment to you in your first diary that talks about that.
You say you’re mad at Bush. Why? It’s important to know. At least to me. Is it because he’s messed up the way the war has been fought? Or because he shouldn’t have started it at all?
This piece by Beth Quinn, found at Common Dreams, goes a little ways toward explaing how I feel about this war and those who’ve been lost to it.
Peace
Hi Megan, I appreciate your response diary and the fuller explanation of your first one….those details might have helped the first one to have a better result.
I can understand your feelings, this site is a mass of people with all kinds of feelings, but most of all we care about people, all people, be they soldier or not.
If you talked to my Iraqi friend Dena, she will tell you she is glad America came there, otherwise she would have never gotten out. She just doesn’t like the results of the war.
Perhaps it would be better in future to address the person writing the comment than directing it to the whole site. We have had many discussions in the past about this subject and I’m sure we will again.
WEll I would like to formally welcome you to the site and hope that we can look forward to you as a contributing member. Would you like to tell us a little more about you?
One member, a very wise woman named scribe, wrote of the loss of her brother in a diary titled, Dear Little Brother…. These are some of her words:
How we use our anger and how we choose to honor our dead can take different forms.
Thank you.
I, for one, do not feel that any human life is a wasted life. And I agree with you that the language that you describe might be interpreted as an insult. Further, I believe that many of our soldiers have done individual acts of great humanity in Iraq, and I suspect and hope that your brother was among the very best examples of those who were working to make the best of a difficult situation.
Rather than saying that our fallen soldier’s lives were “wasted” I would say that their deaths were tragic, perhaps needless, and mourn the loss of the rest of their lives and what they might have become and the things that they might have done. I think that whoever the person was who said the thing that you objected to most is also a caring and thoughtful person who is just so angry and fed up with the war that they are, in some sense, lashing out just as you were in your original diary.
Emotions on all sides of this issue are very high and I think that many of us here feel that our voices have been totally and completely ignored, so our frustrations may be showing. Speaking for myself, I truly believe that the war was the wrong tactic at the wrong time and has been poorly planned from the start. I waver between feelings of anger and despair. Anger at the people who started this war and despair that some members of the human race stubbornly cling to the belief that wars of aggression can solve problems.
Again, I welcome you.
By the way, I just ran across this post at “Unclaimed Territory” by Glen Greenwald that fully expresses my own frustration about the voices of reason in this Iraq debacle having been ignored for so long. And they are continuing to be ignored and belittled as much as possible by the mainstream media in America and by the so-called ‘leaders’ who got us into this war in the first place. You may or may not agree with his argument, but it is a very very good look at why some of us here at BT are angry.
From “Unclaimed Territory”:
I am glad you have chosen to post here again Megan. In my very humble opinion, I think you came here in search of some answers. In the moment you were doing that you were(and most likely still) very hurt and angry about the loss of your loved one. That is more than understandable.
Please know that even though I am totally against the illegal occupation of Iraq based on lies to profit the warmongers, I am so so so sad at the loss of innocent lives. Both American soldiers and Iraqi innocents. That is what makes me angry. Stick around Megan. We just may have some answers you may not have expected.
and share your pain. I will never look upon your brothers death as a waste. I am a soldiers wife and the mother of a soldiers children. I don’t agree with the Iraq War. There is much more to serving though right now than just whether or not someone agrees with the Iraq War. Every soldier is his/her own person, each soldier knows why he/she serves and the rhetoric of the right or the rhetoric of the left cannot lay claim to landscape of a single soul because rhetoric is a dead thing but a soul is a living dynamic being. Your heart knows all you need to know about your brother……..as far as everything else goes ALL WILL BE KNOWN IN DUE TIME. Be well MeganBrooke, care for yourself with loving kindness, it is his desire for you to heal and live well. I will keep you in my thoughts and heart today.