These are dark days. We go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.
In between, we’re lucky if the sun makes an appearance between the storms of December. These are also the days of holiday and hope. Each of us participates in a festival of light, of love, and of hope for a better future, for peace on earth. But it is hard to express a hope for peace when we have American soldiers halfway around the globe fighting and dying in one war that has already been lost – Iraq.
But perhaps there is more hope to share this year than last. After all, the voters demanded an end to the folly of Iraq in the elections last month.
But don’t fool yourself into believing that just because you voted a certain way, or because you might have joined in an anti-war protest before the invasion of Iraq, or not, that you are off the hook now.
Hope is not just a feeling, it demands an action. We can’t wait for another Iraq Study Group report to chart a path to peace. We have already destroyed a country, while spending $700 billion and counting. Every day more and more casualties pile up. In the first 11 days of December, 46 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. They include Marine Corps Major Megan Malia McClung, who has family in Coupeville. Major McClung was a graduate of the Naval Academy. She organized a Marine Corps Marathon in Iraq and ran in it.
While she was escorting reporters in Ramadi, she was killed by a roadside bomb.
We want to believe that we are good and moral people, but one vote in one election and one holiday greeting of “peace on earth” don’t add up to ethical actions. A moral life demands much more than that.
And that’s the problem for all of us. The culture that surrounds us is saturated with the idolatry of material excesses. Our economy zooms along a winner-take-all track, with a few doing very well, the majority of people just hanging on, and everyone encouraged to buy, buy, buy. We are led to believe that our houses are too small, our cars are too old, our bicycles are too heavy. So we have to go out and remodel, trade in, and buy the latest, maxing out our credit cards. Being a consumer trumps being a citizen.
We should expect more from ourselves as Americans. Yes, we can and should vote. But if we leave it there, the president and our elected representatives will take the easy road (for them) of postponing decisions.
So we need to combine the idea of hope with the demand that our members of Congress hold George W. Bush accountable for getting us out of Iraq, quickly.
Democrats are especially responsible, now that they control the House and the Senate. Let’s keep in mind that several of them voted to get us into this folly, including Reps. Norm Dicks and Adam Smith, as well as Sen. Maria Cantwell. We need to make Iraq a topic for discussion that won’t go away and will make people uncomfortable and uneasy until we get out of the war we created there. The newly elected senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, has already set the example. At a White House reception, President Bush asked him “How’s your boy?” referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.
Webb responded, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.”
If the people are silent, then the decider, as George W. Bush likes to call himself, will indeed determine how long to allow the sacrifice of Americans to continue for the sake of his own ego. We claim to be a democracy. In a democracy, the people are active citizens. So we can demand that our government get our troops out of Iraq. In fact, we must. If we want to honor the season of peace on earth, we must end our participation in war in Iraq. And we can only do that if we are, at the foremost, citizens, not shoppers.
John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
