4,000

Consider this.   We're now five anguishing years into a discretionary war.   The costs have been staggering, whether measured in young lives, in financial terms, or in what the fallout has done to tear apart the fabric of our society.   The moving-target reasoning of why we got into this quagmire does a smirk-faced tango with an ever-changing pastel of "victory".   And please, please don't ask for an actionable definition of victory.   Powerful old white men will cast you as unpatriotic - as if you're incapable of respecting OUR children, OUR spouses, OUR friends and cousins.

If you dare ask why we continue to feed the fire with our best and brightest, you're told that we don't want another 9/11.   Ask why, then, we've committed to wasting our time, resources, and reputation in Iraq, and you're cast as a quaint, dim dolt who just doesn't get it.   Tell our vice-president that two-thirds of Americans condemn the handling of the debacle, and his seasoned, reasoned response comes back, "So?"

Why are we posting this today?   Well, we've now sacrificed 4,000 young American lives in Iraq.   FOUR THOUSAND "regret to inform you" notifications, body transports, identifications, funerals, burials.   And countless families, forever, casualties of war.  

To our elected officials in Washington: DON'T YOU DARE question our patriotism.   If you ever got beyond the Beltway you would see how ridiculous you sound, how truly clueless you appear.   Yes, that might have worked in the days immediately following 9/11, but now you just sound like, well, dim old white men.

Think back - remember those post-9/11 days, when Russians were saying "We're all Americans"?   When the French were saying "We're all New Yorkers"?   Candlelight vigils for us, in Asia?   Out of the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania COULD have arisen the new world that has always been an ideal.   Rather than seizing the moment, though, we opted for the low road, for business as usual.   We suffered catastrophically from the lack of, as somebody's father once called it, "that vision thing."

Oh, and by the way.   Thank you for reading this far.   It's important, because each and every letter in this piece - every period and comma, every quote and hyphen - each one represents TWO Americans who never made it home from Iraq.   Perhaps their brave families and friends can teach our leaders a thing or two about patriotism.