Independence Day arrived early this year for my next-door neighbor, Celia. It arrived in the guise of two Army uniforms with The Letter from the Secretary of Defense bearing the bad news that her husband had been killed last week in Iraq.
Whereas for the nation, this July 4th will be a celebration of the principles as enshrined in our Declaration of Independance, for Celia, her Independace Day will be a time of mourning, for a death delivered in their defense. I doubt we'll be seeing Celia at any of our July 4th functions. The last we saw of her and her children were their backs as they walked out on the funeral for a father and a husband for just after Celia was presented with the flag from her husband's coffin, she threw it to the ground and stepped on it.
We Americans, whose signature by proxy now appears at the bottom of The Letter some 2,700 times, signed by machine for an offical too callous to lend his own hand for those who lent their lives, are compelled by simple justice and morality to account for and reconcile our July 4th sacraments with their sacrifices. We owe it to them to pause amongst the booze, barbeques, and bellyflops into the lake, be it at dawn, when the sun first rises again upon this Republic for its 230th year, or when the last ember of the last firework dims and floats away on an errant wind: Did Celia's husband die for "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" or was his life squandered by malicious opportunists who themselves have stepped on the flag to advance their agendas? It is one thing to die for a principle, yet another to die merely for a prince.
It has been approximately three and a half years since the invasion of Iraq, with hundreds of thousands or more dead Iraqiis, 2,700 dead and 50,000 wounded or more US troops, $500 billion or more spent, a nasty and lethal insurgency underway, with no end in sight.
The bottom line for all of our sacrifices amounts to precious little to justify the outrageous waste of life and resources. What did America have to show for its sacrifice and efforts: political "progress" in Iraq? Yet another puppet Prime Minister with yet another puppet government? In answer to how long must we stay in Iraq, we hear: "dunno". How much will it cost us: "dunno".
And so this July 4th, here we are in a land without hope, in a war without end. Launched on a lie, financed at the cost of "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", such as education, employment, health, the environment, and all of those other more boring responsibilities for which "Governments are instituted among Men".
We would do well in considering George Bush and what his acolytes have done, to recall some of the particulars of the indictment against the King of Great Britian in the Declaration of Independance, thus clarifying how far this Beast, this Beauty, this America has strayed: "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice... He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation." Perhaps we owe it to Celia and her kind to re-declare our Declaration of Independence and take back this country.
-Posted years ago, yet nothing has changed much...
