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[derby378]

You may think you've seen this story before, but trust me - you haven't. Read it all the way to the end and e-mail it to anyone you know who still supports invading Iraq.

One Friday afternoon, my nine-year-old son, Billy, wanted to know why we were at war in Iraq. My husband looked at our son and then looked at me. My husband and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be honored to serve and defend our country again today. I knew that my husband would give him a good explanation.

My husband thought for a few minutes and then told my son to go stand in our front living room window. He told him: "Son, stand there and tell me what you see?"

"I see trees and cars and our neighbor's houses," he replied.

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the United States of America and you are President Bush."

Our son giggled and said "OK."

"Now son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that every house and yard on this block is a different country," my husband said.

"OK, Dad, I'm pretending."

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and see that man come out of his house with his wife and he has her by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they are kids and afraid of their father. You see all of this son.... what do you do?"

"Dad?"

"What do you do, son?"

"I call the police, Dad."

"OK. Pretend that the police are the United Nations and they take your call, listen to what you know and saw but they refuse to help. What do you do then son?"

"Dad, but the police are supposed to help!" My son starts to whine.

"They don't want to son, because they say that it is not their place or your place to get involved and that you should stay out of it," my husband says.

"But Dad...he killed her!!" Billy exclaims.

"I know he did...but the police tell you to stay out of it. Now I want you to look out that window and pretend you see our neighbor who you're pretending is Saddam turn around and do the same thing to his children."

"Daddy...he kills them?"

"Yes son, he does. What do you do?"

"Well, if the police don't want to help, I will go and ask my next-door neighbor to help me stop him." our son says.

"Son, our next-door neighbor sees what is happening and refuses to get involved as well. He refuses to open the door and help you stop him," my husband says.

"But Dad, I NEED help!!! I can't stop him by myself!!"

"WHAT DO YOU DO, SON?" Our son starts to cry.

"OK, no one wants to help you, the man across the street saw you ask for help and saw that no one would help you stop him. He stands taller and puffs out his chest. Guess what he does next, son?"

"What, Daddy?"

"He walks across the street to the old ladies house and breaks down her door and drags her out, steals all her stuff and sets her house on fire and then...he kills her. He turns around and sees you standing in he window and laughs at you. WHAT DO YOU DO?"

"Daddy..."

"WHAT DO YOU DO?"

Our son is crying and he looks down and he whispers, "I close the blinds, Daddy."

My husband looks at our son with tears in his eyes and asks him... "Why?"

"Because Daddy.....the police are supposed to help...people who needs it...and they won't help....You always say that neighbors are supposed to HELP neighbors, but they won't help either...they won't help me stop him...I'm afraid....I can't do it by myself ...Daddy.....I can't look out my window and just watch him do all these terrible things and...and.....do nothing...so....I'm just going to close the blinds....so I can't see what he's doing........and I'm going to pretend that it is not happening."

I start to cry.

My husband looks at our nine-year-old son standing in the window, looking pitiful and ashamed at his answers to my husbands questions and he tells him..."Son?"

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Open the blinds because that man.... he's at your front door..."WHAT DO YOU DO?"

Billy looks at his father, anger and defiance in his eyes. He balls up his tiny fists and looks his father square in the eyes, without hesitation he says: "I DEFEND MY FAMILY, DAD!! I'M NOT GONNA LET HIM HURT MOMMY OR MY SISTER, DAD!!! I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM, DAD, I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM!!!!!"

I see a tear roll down my husband's cheek and he grabs my son to his chest and hugs him tight, and cries..."It's too late to fight him, he's too strong and he's already at YOUR front door son.....you should have stopped him BEFORE he killed his wife. You have to do what's right, even if you have to do it alone, before......it's too late." my husband whispers.

But then Billy's tears dry up, and he looks at his father with a very puzzled look. "But Dad, why did WE give him PERMISSION to hurt his children and their Mommy?"

"WHAT?" My husband looked shocked by this question, and to be honest, I was just as stunned.

"Well, Dad, ever since that war that you and Mommy fought in before I was born, we made sure that Saddam couldn't hurt any of his neighbors again by watching everything he did."

My husband frowned. "That's right, son."

"And all the kids at school told me that Saddam was a very bad man, but he didn't have any planes to hurt people with, and he didn't have any of those bad WMDs that President Bush said he had, and we had made up stories just so we could go into Iraq and take all their oil and their money while pretending we were giving the Iraqis freedom. So now I'm really confused, Dad.....why DID we go to war in Iraq?"

- - - - - - - - - -

The following Monday, all of Billy’s friends called me to ask why Billy never showed up for school that day. Did Billy have the flu? Did Billy fall out of a tree and hurt himself? I told them all that Billy was living with his uncle for a while. The truth, however, was that Billy was being sent to a military boarding school in Arizona by his father. Not that the school didn't have advantages, though; if both of us were called up for deployment at the same time, we wouldn't have to rush to find someone to look after Billy for us. The instructors at the school are strict, but they're all honorable military men who will never lift a finger to hurt Billy or molest him. And Uncle Dale lives only 10 minutes away from the school in case there's an emergency.

No matter how much Billy cried, his father never told him why he had to leave his friends and go. But in private, my husband complained that Billy was "softened" by the attitudes of "liberal" parents who had been duped by "those goddamned Massachusetts socialists" who were opposed to Operation Iraqi Freedom all along. It's hard explaining all of that to a nine-year-old, even a bright one like Billy.

But now I find myself occasionally peeking at other news channels and even reading British newspapers on the Internet; my husband is puzzled why I'm no longer content with just FOX News. Even though I think Michael Moore is a blowhard, it was hard to argue with the letters he's received from our troops in Iraq. And I even had a long talk with a Quaker activist over coffee and biscuits over why the Quakers, who championed human rights and hated torture and persecution, could not bring themselves to support our liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, no matter how much they despised what he did to his own people.

And it gets me to thinking: maybe the real reason Billy was shipped off to that Arizona school was because his father was afraid Billy may be right. He still believes we did the right thing by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and so do I. On a moral level, we couldn't just sit idly by and watch him torture and kill innocent Iraqis. But when I hear about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, when I hear about our utter failure to find WMDs in Iraq, when I read about how the conversion of Iraq's oil economy from the dollar to the euro alarmed the Bush administration, when I learn that Halliburton has been pocketing our tax dollars instead of using them to support the troops, when I learn that our soldiers on the front lines can't get decent armor for their vehicles, and when I realize that over 1,400 of our troops died in Iraq for reasons that the President seems to change on a day-by-day basis, I begin to wonder, did we do the moral thing by removing Saddam Hussein from power?

We've been told that a good soldier always follows orders from his superiors and his Commander-in-Chief. But I've learned that a good soldier also remembers why he fights for his country in the first place. He does it for his family, his friends, his God, and for a set of national values he holds dearly. That's what makes a soldier a true patriot. And when good men stand by and let evil happen, that too is a great evil. But there is a line from a story by T.S. Eliot that stayed in my head ever since high school:

THIS BY FAR IS THE GREATEST TREASON,
TO DO THE RIGHT THING FOR THE WRONG REASON.

We're told that our President is doing what is right. We're told that we, as a free nation, must understand that this war is a war of humanity. But when we "close the blinds" on the real reasons for removing Saddam Hussein from power, if it turns out that a handful of scheming, greedy men manipulated our self-righteousness to drum up support for invading Iraq – while simultaneously ignoring the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 and made America bleed – is what we're doing a greater form of evil?

And does Billy really have to pay for realizing the mistakes our country has made?

WHAT DO I DO?

AND WHAT WILL YOU DO???