I became politically aware because I had to. I coulda been killed. In 1968 I registered for the draft. That meant that I could be chosen to give up my life for reasons determined in secret by the folks who had control of the United States Government at the time. I lost friends to that secret cabal. Turns out it was mostly a bad decision by one guy, Robert McNamarra, that got the whole country all torn apart. Some of my friends were blown to bits in Southeast Asia and some of them were merely shot and killed. I have been wanting to go see the Viet Nam war memorial to look for their names. Some of my friends are like my neighbor up on the mountain. His sister in law describes him as one of those poor boys who never came all the way back from Viet Nam. He has all his fingers and toes but something else never was right about him and won't be...ever.

We will see the same thing when all this war that is happening now is over. The world will not be a better place for our war in Iraq. It will not be the fighting that will change the world, it will be when we stop the killing that change will come. Why not do it right now? As it is right now, we will have friends who will never come back completely. We can make the choice right now or we can wait until we hit the thousand mark in dead children of America. Or we can do like Richard Nixon did...He ran for his second term saying he needed to be kept in office so that he could end the war. He got reelected and he did in fact end the war...after another 50,000 American children got killed. The we got "Peace with Honor". Yeah, right!

Country Joe and the Fish wrote the song that replaced the National Anthem during the Viet Nam War. It is the "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag." Its most famous line is, "...and it's one, two, three, What am I fighting for?" Here is a line from another Country Joe song:

"And those who took so long to learn the subtle ways of death / Lie and bleed in paddy mud with questions on their breath / And we send prayers and praises."

Country Joe is still playing music and writing songs. Here is a line from his recent effort. it sounds familiar:

"And pound their feet into the sand of shores they've never seen / Delegates from the western land to join the death machine / And we send cards and letters."

So now here we are, driving our country incredibly deep in debt with the money essentially going to a company with huge financial ties to the Vice President who is one of the four or five men who are the architechs of the war in the first place. The organization they belong to is called the Project for a New American Century. Things have gone very very wrong for them and their war. That means that things have gone very very wrong for us and our children.

Ask yourself this question: "What is the best possible outcome that can be reasonably expected from the Iraq War?" It is not good. I have a proposal to make. Instead of reinstating the draft, instead of creating ahorrible division within our own country, and instead of killing and wounding physically and emotionally thousands more of our children, instead of killing more Iraqis... Let's just leave! Here's how we can do it. Let's load up and come home. We spend a fraction of the money on alternative enrgy sources and energy conservation and we redirect our economy to creating healthy industries and the price of oil drops through the floor! There is then no money to support the Saudis, the Syrians, the cartel in Venezuela, and the house of Bush and Cheney go bancrupt too, but hey, there have to be casualties in any war, right? Why not them instead of our children?

Peace,

Steve