My son has been back in the States for two weeks, having survived -- mentally and physically -- his first tour in Iraq with the U.S. Marines. I'll finally get to hug him sometime next month.
To say I'm grateful and relieved that he was spared is a vast understatement. After seven months of living with the terror of losing my only child, I'm sleeping better and able to make short-term plans without a nagging, palpable sense of dread.
What hasn't gone away is the nausea and bile that rise each time a casualty report pops up online. And when I read just now that "U.S. April Death Toll in Iraq Passes 100," all I can do is scream: WHO WILL FINALLY STOP THIS SENSELESS CARNAGE???!!!
My thoughts for the moment are with the parents and families who received the most devastating news of their lives in the last two days. The image of a pair of Marines in dress blues at my front gate was my worst nightmare over the past year, and the loved ones of the latest fallen soldiers and Marines are living it as I write.
The emotional horror is unimaginable.
I could write on and on about the feelings of a left-wing mother with a right-wing child who boldly enlisted in the military during the Reign of Bush, of how I still gasp with incredulity at the bald-faced lies told by oilmen to justify a preemptive strike on an oil-rich country in the name of democracy and the "war on terror," and how that invasion was bungled far beyond anything a storyteller or Hollywood screenwriter could imagine, save, perhaps, for Beckett or Vonnegut. But I've covered that, and more, in previous diaries.
Meantime my Top Fears include the following:
- That the Democrats will cave into meaningless, drawn-out compromise after Bush's slam-dunk veto tomorrow.
- That the public will believe the rewound spin that Democrats are too weak for a dangerous world.
- That things will get worse before they get worse.
- That the Bush administration will let the clock run out on this war, and escape without accountability.
- That my son will be sent back to Iraq before the end of the year.
November 2008 can't come soon enough, but I dread all that we'll still have to endure between now and then. Bush is always talking about making tough choices. Let's hope the Democrats make a few of their own, in the name of truth and justice. In the name of SAVING the troops.