At What Cost?

I took Isabel and Erica to the airport in the dark early this morning. While driving back up I-95 toward Connecticut I was listening to the news on NPR and I heard a story about Mashpee, Massachusetts and how this small town of 14,000 people had suffered a terrible loss in the past two weeks. Two recent high school graduates, one from the class of 2005 and the other from the class of 2007, had died in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t know either of the young men who died, but hearing interviews with their friends and families left me feeling very sad.

And then very angry.


The mother of one of the dead soldiers consoled herself with the knowledge that her son died protecting the freedoms of all Americans. Her heartfelt belief in the truth of her son’s sacrifice was the saddest thing I have heard in a long time. Because the war in Iraq has gone on so long I have started to forget the burning anger I once felt at President Bush for starting an unnecessary and unwarranted war of aggression. But this mother's hurt and her pride brought my rage at George Bush right back up to the surface.
His horrendously flawed judgment has cost tens of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, America’s moral credibility, and a sad mother in Mashpee her son—a son I am afraid died for nothing but the misguided ineptitude of a man with too much power and not enough brains.