Conversation Point

Casualties of War

Yesterday marked the beginning of the fifth year of U.S. involvement in what has now become known as the Iraqi Civil War. The troop surge pressed into service by Bush administration policies backs a weary American army that many military experts say cannot hold out much longer. With many troops returning for third and fourth fours of duty, with much shorter breaks at home between tours, it is amazing we have kept our presence alive so far away from home for so long. But we are learning a very hard lesson in this country today: the United States is not all-knowing or all-powerful. Neither is our leadership, despite their best efforts to pretend otherwise with themselves.

What we have today is the mess we have made based on incomplete thoughts processes and poor decision-making practices. Somehow there has to be a shift away from discussions of winning and losing to making life livable again for the Iraqi people with their own resources and leadership. Somewhere amid the weapons of mass destruction, the roadside bombs and the images of tanks and artillery traveling the streets of Baghdad each night that we see on the national news, we have forgotten that Iraq is not the fifty-first state. We have forgotten that this is not our country, not our war and that the future of Iraq is not within our decision-making power to decide.

We have also forgotten what it is like to host a war on our own land. The last time we did so was during the 1860's. Next month marks the 142nd anniversary of the end of our own Civil War. We picked that fight among ourselves, only receiving help on both sides from other nations after the battles had begun. That war, like the one going on in the Middle East, was fought on main streets and family farms, on backyards and front porches, places where parties, ice cream socials, weddings and baptisms had previously welcomed human warmth, kind heartedness and generosity of spirit.

War changes everything.

My Great Great Grandfather Henry fought in that war, something I happened to discover only this week. He marched with the Michigan 4th Regiment, Company 13 Infantry to places far from home that now sound familiar to us: Antitam, Gettysburg, New Orleans. He was among the fortunate who came back to his wife and two children and went on to have two more sons, including my Great Grandfather Charles. My Grandfather William went on to serve in World War I, but he never spoke of that experience or his own grandfather's participation in a war that surely seemed far removed from our quiet lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. All my questions about what Europe was like while he was there did was cast a shadow over his face. Wars, even those in the distant past, were not discussed.

Perhaps that needs to change because war changes everything.

Our Civil War residue still lingers in race relations and regional economic development to this day. Maybe we need to each spend time looking at the old photographs of our land strewn with lifeless bodies belonging to loved ones who may be our own ancestors or the ancestors of our friends and neighbors. Reading the newspaper stories and memoirs of those whose homes became command posts and emergency hospitals may help us grasp what it was like to lose control over one's destiny to a cause that had lost its course and meaning. Visiting with these people who are not so removed from us in our own time, these people whose lives were blown apart, destroyed by cannon fire, malnutrition, disease and limited medical care, may help us feel what they felt and understand a little of what war really does to a country and its people.

Because war changes everything. We seem to have forgotten.

We have distanced ourselves so far from this war we are waging in Iraq that we no longer remember why we are there. We are ignoring the impact war waged in people's neighborhoods has on them and their children. We choose to deny the long-term ramifications that will be felt for generations to come, whether discussed or not. We have removed ourselves so far from God's intention for us that we have forgotten, are ignoring these important words from the prophet Isaiah calling us to repentance: "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:6-9)."

It is time to pay attention to what we are doing, to how our actions are affecting the Iraqi people. It is time to remember what war up close does to people's minds, bodies and spirits. It is time to decide what our faith tells us to do to help the Iraqi people govern their own country and heal their lives. It is time to help them reclaim their lives and their peace.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 6:09 PM