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I write this in January, 2006, after taking the sign to a half-dozen events.
I've been approached twice by hostile people asking "Who is paying you to do this?"
I've also been asked by a few friendly people "What group are you with?"
Nobody else asked me why I do this, but I've asked myself.
Again, in February, 2006, I turn to more questions I have been asked.
People on both sides of the issue ask "Are you a veteran?"
People who disagree with the sign ask "Have you got relatives in Iraq?"
Here are the answers:
- Nobody pays me to do this. I do if for free. It's a contribution I make to our body politic.
- I'm not with any group. I'm independent. I support and agree with many groups and individuals, but this is just me. Anyone is welcome to hang out with me, and I usually ask if someone will take a photo, but there is no group.
- I do this because:
- I was appalled at the headlong rush to war in Iraq and the dissembling orchestrated by the Bush administration to roll the tragedies of 9/11 beyond Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Al Queada and the Taliban to embroil Iraq and Sadam Hussein and turn the war on terror into a seething stew of lies, half-truths, innuendo, and paranoia.
- My faith in the American electorate was dashed by the outcome of the 2004 elections.
- I was horrified by the administration's response to Katrina.
- I was dumbfounded by policies that led to the torture, maiming, and murder of prisoners in our custody.
- I am disgusted by the greed, stupidity, and lack of vision apparent to me in the administration's every initiative (e.g. welfare reform, prescription drug support, education, minimum wage, abortion rights, church and state, trampling on civil liberties, etc., etc, etc.).
- I am not a veteran. When I turned 18 in 1970 the U.S. government was still at war in Vietnam. By then the war was very unpopular, was going very badly, and we had a lottery for the draft. My lottery number was high enough so I didn't get drafted. Not that I'd have gone to Vietnam as a combatant. I had studied draft counseling with the American Friends Service Committee, and was prepared to apply for concientious objector status if the government had tried to draft me. I knew many veterans of the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and the second world war. Most of the ones who had been in combat were seriously messed up by it. That's not to say I'm a total peacenik. I'm not that evolved.
- Like everyone, at some level or another, we all have relatives and friends, or friends of friends, in Iraq. I do not have children, cousins, nephews, nieces, or other blood relatives there, but aren't all of us brothers and sisters? I've heard people say we should just "kill them all." The people who say such things are lost, very lost, in hatred, fear, and ignorance.
Every day I am more and more convinced that the current administration cannot be trusted to follow through on anything without creating further disasters in their wake.
So, I am moved to protest. Now, whenever a group of republicans gather to celebrate one of their own and I am free to do so, I take myself and the "War Was Based On Lies" sign to bear mostly-silent witness to their duplicity. Now, whenever I have time and large numbers of Americans are gathering and passing by, I take myself and the "War Was Based On Lies" sign to bear mostly-silent witness to the deceit upon which we based unleashing war in Iraq.
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