Why I am antiwar

[whosinpower]

As a child, in midwestern Canada, and insulated from war, I recall a teacher who was talking about the Germans, WW2, the holocaust, the japanese, veterans and such. If memory serves me, he was trying to give us a notion of what Remebrance day is all about - what the veterans fought for, what they fought against and why.

I never "got" the glory part. And, while I could easily understand fighting against tyranny - the pictures, the accounts, the stories made it all so sad, wasteful, violent and depraved. I was and am thankful of the greater generation for ending it finally in 1945, but never ever thankful for the war in the first place.

When at war, I wondered, why does humanity suffer de-evolvement and immorality? Seeing the many pictures of suffering jews under the nazi rule, I didn't just hate the nazi's - I hated war, period. I hated how it reduces us into a black vs. white world of ever increasing shock treatments of depravity. I hate what it does to people, social conscience and morality. This is the great hypocrisy of war making. It does not make society better. It does not make humanity better. It reduces us to the level even worse than animals - for they do not do the horrible things we do to each other while playing our little wargames.

This has been my fundamental thinking ever since childhood. And now this article I just read - you must all read....My shoulders hunched up in a protective screen whilst poring over the words of Dr. Salam Ismael. The familiar gut tightening and tears welled up as I read his account of Fallujah. I am at a loss here. At a loss over what to do to stop this insanity...at a loss at how low the Americans have sunken (and bitterly sorry to see it happen).


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8093.htm

snip - I also found survivors of another family from the Jolan district. They told me that at the end of the second week of the siege the US troops swept through the Jolan. The Iraqi National Guard used loudspeakers to call on people to get out of the houses carrying white flags, bringing all their belongings with them. They were ordered to gather outside near the Jamah al-Furkan mosque in the centre of town.

On 12 November Eyad Naji Latif and eight members of his family-one of them a six month old child-gathered their belongings and walked in single file, as instructed, to the mosque.

When they reached the main road outside the mosque they heard a shout, but they could not understand what was being shouted. Eyad told me it could have been "now" in English. Then the firing began. US soldiers appeared on the roofs of surrounding houses and opened fire. Eyad's father was shot in the heart and his mother in the chest.

[Jokinomx]

1. Thanks for the link...

Words really can't express my feelings. Sadness, despair, outrage....helplessness. Fear that my own country is not the "good guy".

This confirms to me that I had been right all along. I had been called unpatriotic, that I didn't support the troops....that there was "evil" in the world and this war was going to help make our world a better place. This was before the invasion. I spoke loudly and clearly to my family that this was wrong and that we were being mislead. I really never doubted that I was correct in my feelings...however I really never thought that we would stoop to such a low level as to murder Innocent civilians.

It is a sad day for America and the world. Yet I feel in my heart that this is only the beginning of a series of invasions. With countless thousands suffering from the wrath of bush.

:-(