History Repeats Itself

I wonder why when I hear new reports everyday of more Americans being killed in Iraq it makes me sad, it makes me feel helpless and it makes me worry about my nephew and others who will reach "the age to serve" in no time. How do you show support for something you are firmly against?

I believe I heard the other day that Congress succumbed to Bush's demands for more money to keep this pointless conflict going. Is there anyone in this country who is willing to say "no" to this guy? Does the lunacy truly have to continue? How do we stop this death spiral? Do we have enough collective bodies to throw in front of this train?

When we were on our cruise last week, there was talk of the need for us to reinstitute a draft. Do we not learn from history? How exactly is this conflict any different from Vietnam other than it is on a different continent (no jungle rot on the soldier's feet) and we started this one ourselves? The inability for us to win is the same, neither conflict has had popular support, the government continues to feed us propoganda but now there is even more daily factual footage from the press than we had during Vietnam, reinforcing how pointless, expensive and costly in lives this entire campaign is.

For my generation, this is an especially painful experience. We all fought through demonstrations and vigorous campaigning to end that senseless waste of lives over 30 years ago and we swore nothing like that would ever happen again. How soon we forget...