Musings: Tomorrow's Promise

It was hard to sleep through a night illuminated by a round fat moon, just one day short of fullness, which is why Koko and I were up and out beneath it several times, she growling at a neighbor’s trash can that looked slightly ominous in the shifting silver light.

By the time we finally got up for good, the clouds had blown away, leaving Wailaleale and Makaleha exposed, and we walked fast, in hopes of seeing the moon sink into the space between them. We were just a little too late, and farmer Jerry, who stopped along the road on his way to work, said he had watched it set while he was putting on his shoes.

Well, there’s always tomorrow, and the promise of another moonset.

It seems that for many Iraqis, especially children, tomorrow holds the promise of ill health, which appears to be linked to America’s war-waging there. As a Reuters article reports:

Incidences of cancer, deformed babies and other health problems have risen sharply, Iraqi officials say, and many suspect contamination from weapons used in years of war and accompanying unchecked pollution as a cause.

"We have seen new kinds of cancer that were not recorded in Iraq before war in 2003, types of fibrous (soft tissue) cancer and bone cancer. These refer clearly to radiation as a cause," said Jawad al-Ali, an oncologist in Iraq's second city of Basra.

The use of depleted uranium in U.S. and coalition weaponry in the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait and the 2003 Iraq invasion is well documented, but establishing a link between the radioactive metal and health problems among Iraqis is hard, officials say.

And what about our own troops, and their exposure? Just something to think about as this giant uncontrolled experiment with DU continues and the Prez moves to ramp up the war in Afghanistan in a really big way, sending in an additional 30,000 to 35,000 troops for what, exactly?

I found it quite interesting that a Senate report confirmed that our supposed arch enemy, Osama bin Laden, was within reach of American troops way back in December 2001, but the typically gung ho Bush administration failed to make the full court press required to get him.

Now isn’t that convenient, seeing as how it helped provide some of the justification for invading Iraq and allowed for an additional eight years of conflict in Afghanistan, with no end in sight. You don’t want to catch the “bad guy” too fast when there are still so many billions to be made by the war machine.

And now here we go, deeper into the hole, both literally and figuratively.

So we’ve “liberated” Iraq, only to leave its citizens with a destroyed and toxic nation. Given that legacy, which is more likely, that the people of Afghanistan will welcome us with open arms, or align themselves with “insurgents” who promise to free them from our very real threat?

Obidullah Khan, resident of Kandahar: “If they (Americans) increase troops numbers they will bombard the houses of innocent people more, they will kill more innocent Muslims, they will search more houses and this is going to be a bad disaster for the country.”

You got that right.

Meanwhile, the supposedly liberal press continues to beat the drum for war, with the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting releasing the results of a study that found the nation’s two major newspapers have marginalized antiwar voices. As Democracy Now! reported:

In the New York Times, pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a ratio of five to one, while in the Washington Post the was ratio 10 to one.

Yet according to the study:

[P]olls throughout 2009 show a U.S. public divided on whether the war is even worth fighting, let alone in need of escalation. In three surveys since July, the AP/GfK poll has reported that at least 53 percent of respondents say they oppose the Afghanistan War (PollingReport.com). In September, 51 percent told the Washington Post/ABC News poll (9/10–12/09) that the war was not “worth fighting”; only 46 percent said it was.

So if you’re against the war, no, you’re not alone. The media just want you to think that you are. Because war is very good for business.