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I have not read her book. But I have asked this question to myself many times. To date, I have not been satisfied by any of my answers. Maybe those more knowledgable than I can offer their suggestions on the best way to honor our troops who are fighting a war that should never have been.How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?
By Paul Rockwell t r u t h o u t | Book Review Friday 25 November 2005
A review of Cindy Sheehan's uplifting and soulful book.
The agony of war can transform any human being.
In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Rudyard Kipling, the bellicose poet of the British empire who coined the infamous phrase "white man's burden," urged his own son to join the British military. One week after his son enlisted, he was dead. Overwhelmed with grief, Kipling wrote two "Epitaphs for War." In the first, dead soldiers speak:
If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
In the second, "The Dead Statesman," a statesman speaks:
And now all my lies are proved untrue.
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young.
There are many kinds of betrayal in human affairs - forgery, embezzlement, adultery, murder. But in the affairs of state, there is no greater disloyalty, no greater act of betrayal, than to send young men and women to their deaths on the basis of fraud.
To lie is to murder.
That is the theme of Cindy Sheehan's defiant, witty, compassionate, and deeply patriotic first book, Not One More Mother's Son. What begins in grief over the loss of her son Casey on April 4, 2004, ends in hope at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in August 2005. Action overcomes grief. Direct action empowers.
While she confronts the enormity of suffering caused by lies of state, she does not devote a lot of space to proving that Bush manufactured the case for war. She relies on the long trail of evidence - the early vows of Bush to "take down Saddam;" the revelations of Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clark and other whistle blowers; the report of Representative Henry Waxmen on administration statements known to be false at the time they were made; and of course, the Downing Street memo. All evidence that is already available.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112605X.shtml
I don't care (in this thread) how we got here. I do care (in this thread) what do we do now to honor those that have fallen and the ones still in harms way. Like I said, I don't have any answers for this one. But I am ready to listen.