A Summary of Winter Soldier Testimony: March 13 - 16, 2008

Most of you reading this would agree: War is bad. Then, like me, you'll go back to watching The Office or washing the dishes or getting dressed for church. "The surge is working" you hear as you tie your tie or buckle your sandals. Maybe we will win this war. Maybe we will. But can any war battle won ever truly be called a victory? This war has caused many deaths - for sure not as many deaths as in wars past, but many deaths nonetheless. Any death is one too many. A true victory would be a meeting of the minds and an understanding met. People will always disagree. People will always be stubborn. But if those with the power and the attention can't set a standard for humanitarianism the blood spilling will never stop. War begets war begets war. War is never the answer; it is a failure.

Imagine for a moment a United States whose military was more Peace Corps than death squads, a United States whose money was spent on education and aide and health care instead of weapons of mass destruction. (How many tools of world destruction do we need?) Imagine this enlightened foreign policy. Imagine how less we'd be hated. Imagine the example set. Imagine this example followed. Imagine this imaginary world as real.

I know watching The Office is far more fun than thinking about war. I know that believing this Iraq War is ultimately for a greater good helps us sleep at night. But what greater good can outweigh the 4,000 U.S. deaths and the countless Iraqi deaths? What greater good can outweigh orphans and widows and promising lives ruined? What greater good can outweigh the soldier suicides, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the lost limbs, the brain injuries, the nightmares, and the broken men, women, and children. Such losses are not romantic! The outcomes of war should not be romanticized! We are a sad people who can look at this war as an abstract and not at the individuals.