Thank you for reading, this is my second Daily Kos diary. I always love posting here, its a great community.
The following is a piece I wrote for my writing methods class.
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I hate this war. Thinking about it just makes me angry. It makes my skin get hot and gets my heart rate pumping. I hate this war. I hate it for so many reasons I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Call me unpatriotic and accuse me of treason. Call me someone who hates the United States or someone who hates the military. But I won’t care what you call me because mostly I just hate this war.
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There’s so much about his war that I can’t understand. I don’t understand why it’s acceptable for thousands upon thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children to die. I don’t understand why they had their lives suddenly and violently cut off from this earth. I don’t understand why its alright for the cities that they live in to get plastered with cluster bombs, mortar shells, machine gun fire, and other horrific means of destruction that we don’t hear about. I don’t understand why it’s more important to spend half a trillion dollars on killing brown skinned people while thousands of American children are "left behind", our schools decay, and our environment left to rot.
I can’t comprehend all the lies. I can’t comprehend the lie of the media’s silence in covering the war in its honest, bloody brutality. I can’t comprehend that we were told we’re fighting the war for weapons of mass destruction that were never found. I can’t comprehend the lie that Sadaam Hussein was going to destroy America with "nuke-u-lar" weapons while Osama Bin Laden remains free. I can’t comprehend the lie that I’m a treasonous, America hating liberal that wants to see our soldiers die. I can’t comprehend the lie that the war is guided and directed by the hand of God through the president of the land of the free.
Most of all, I hate how I fell for those lies and supported the war. I hate how I was a stupid and naïve nineteen-year-old that trusted the government; that trusted what my leaders said to me. I hate how I would never be able to look the mother of a dead soldier in the eyes and tell her I supported this war without feeling a burning shame in my gut. How would I be able to look her son in the eyes and tell him he is going to die for a good cause? How about telling his wife the same? Or his daughters? Can I tell them that he’ll die to spread democracy?
I need to take it back and right my mistake. I need to become a vocal advocate against these wrongs beyond just utilizing my vote. I need to exercise my right to the first amendment, despite my fears, because our founding fathers didn’t fight so hard for it to watch me cower in fear. I need to have the courage to speak out like the anti-establishment figures of our past; Mark Twain, Eugene Debs, Kurt Vonnegut, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. I need to support the troops by having the courage to speak out for them when their only acknowledged voices are obedience and loyalty. I need to demand whatever it takes to treat the mental shock of war when they come home, so that suicide isn’t the only way to silence the nightmares. Most of all, I need to demand that our men and women come home so that no more of them need to die, so that no more Iraqis need to die, and so we can help them lick their wounds and begin to fully recover the mental and bodily injuries.
I wonder if I can do this, or if it will bring me any redemption.