In his article titled "Americans have become 'Good Germans'," Rich explores the issue from two directions. Like most of us, the blame for Iraq must be hoisted on the Bush administration for their lies and high crimes and misdemeanors. Secondly, Congress and the Media did a craptastic job of holding the president accountable for both proof of war and then defense of war. But then there's us. We didn't do anything either. We didn't listen to those media outlets that discouraged war. We didn't listen to our Congresspersons (such as Russ Feingold) that objected. Worse, however, is that the vast majority of Americans have been on the Stop-Bush train since 2005; and yet...nothing. We've done nothing.
In truth, many of us have written about the war, talked with friends, and even marched in demonstrations throughout the country. We have spoken to our Senators and Representatives. We have even e-mailed the president directly. We are expressing outrage, but we aren't collecting our voices and speaking as one. We aren't making the war end. We aren't stopping the Bush agenda of torture and deception. We are too comfortable.
Rich suggests that "With the war's entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq." But it isn't about who is fighting and who is dying, it is that sense of urgency that is missing. I don't need to go to Iraq to know it's wrong. I don't need my cousin in Iraq to pray daily that the war will end today. But we so often depend on that sense of contact to create that urgency that inspires us to act. In a lecture a couple years ago given in Canada, the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong discussed his first encounter with homosexuality in the church: he was a new bishop, making a visit to one of his congregations. It was in the days in which the bishop stayed in the rectory as the guest of the congregation's rector. As Bp. Spong was looking around, he got the feeling that two people lived in the house. As he was concerned about the rector having a girlfriend that stayed over without the vestry's tacit approval, he made what Bp. Spong considered perhaps the biggest mistake of his entire ministry: he asked the man if anyone else lived here. The rector said "yes"--another man. Bp. Spong was then forced to do something about it. This was in the 1960s and they were only beginning to explore the science of homosexuality. Soon after, he was convinced of the scientific validity of homosexuality and its theological implications. However, this was too late to return the priest to his position. He had ruined the man's life.
What leaped out at me as I heard this story was the impact of the personal experience--and our facing our own issues of morality and conscience--which encourages us to do extraordinary things. By having fewer soldiers in Iraq than is necessary and supplementing them with unrestricted mercenaries (Blackwater USA and others) ostracizes us from that feeling; from those emotions. Sending more soldiers to die brutal deaths or to come back severely and permanently wounded should never be seen as the opportunity for greater understanding, but it is that thing in which we ordinarily depend to build our sense of outrage. We have been waiting for that moment and nothing has happened.
But this is our mistake. Our patient waiting. Our genial behavior that amounts to "Please Sir, may have another?". Our hoping that electing different Congresspersons will suddenly change the behavior of a powermad president. Our resistance in throwing insults back at the Right-Wing fringe whose most tame insult is to call us unpatriotic and responsible for the deaths of our soldiers for 'aiding the enemy'. Our watching. And when we feel that raising fire that starts in the belly ascend toward our heart and lungs, we push it right back down to where it started. We are too nice. We are too polite. We don't resort to those base tactics of the fringe. But in allowing these atrocities to continue, we are those "Good Germans", ignoring the destruction that happens in front of us.
We need to let the fire out. We need to organize. We need to do something right now. We can't wait for the next president, because our future is in danger today. An Iraq war veteran named Paul Rieckhoff, as quoted by Rich, outlines the potential calamity of the Iraqi civil war, not in splitting the country in thirds or in continued presence of U.S. troops, but in the event of the sudden departure of our employed mercenaries. Rich, with quotes by Rieckhoff suggests that:
should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply "drop their guns and go home." Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those "who deliver their bullets and beans."The stability of our military presence is based on corporations that are overpaid and held entirely unaccountable.
This is the fire. And this is the future. We must end this war now.
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