A Warm and Worried January

Like many other parts of the nation, we are enjoying the spring-like weather here in Southern Illinois. We hear reports it may end soon, and we cannot be surprised about that. It is that time of year.

Like the rest of the nation, we are concerned about the war in Iraq. While Gerald and I agreed before it started, that we should not enter another country, the fact remains that we did.

(In fact, I was so convinced by Colin Powell's address to the UN that there were WMD there, that I continued expecting to find them long after everyone else was saying they weren't there. I kept thinking Hussein must have had something to hide or he would not have been so uncooperative with the UN inspectors. And I trusted Colin Powell that he would speak the truth in an international gathering. And though I did not think we should have gone in, after Powell's speech, I thought maybe I was wrong.)

I never did understand what Iraq had to do with 9/11/01, and I guess we know now that our leaders were telling us wrong on that also.

Now what? Like the rest of the nation, we have relatives who will be sent AGAIN if we continue fighting. I don't want that. I have prayed they would not have to go.

Yet the fact remains that we went in to Iraq. What will happen if we leave now? I stopped my work this afternoon and listened briefly to two American mothers who had lost sons over there. They had opposite opinions. Who should we believe? I have not the faintest idea. I do not want this infant democracy to die. I do not want the people of Iraq (that we said we were trying to save) to suffer any more. I want those Iraqi children to survive the same as I do the children of America. I do not want American service men and women to have died in vain.

We surely have gotten ourselves in a mess. How I wish we would have stayed in our own boundaries and minded our own business. It has hurt me when I heard our leadership say we should be glad we are fighting over there and not here. That seems so immoral to me. Why should we be glad that we let little children over there be killed? I cannot see how a war over there is making us safer--and no matter how wonderful our troops are to help those little ones, the fact remains that the the poor people of Iraq are in a war zone of our making. I am glad that Hussein and sons were stopped. But I am not sure that the so-called Civil War is less harsh on the Iraqi nation. How do we measure human misery? How do we know what would have happened if we had done things differently? How can a civilian citizen with no certain information have a opinion on what we ought to do now?

I will be listening to the President's speech tonight like so many of you. I certainly won't have the positive emotions that I had when he spoke to us from the battleship. I do not have any idea what we should do now. I don't expect to know what I think when he finishes.

It really does not matter what I think. I did not think we should go in, but we did. Regardless of what anyone thinks, we will have to watch whatever happens.

I will continue to pray for the Iraqi people and for our troops and the families of those who died on foreign soil. I will continue to pray that somehow someway good will come out of this evil mess where the Garden of Eden used to be.