Liberal View

When I was in junior high, I was really angry with a friend. For anonymity’s sake, let’s call her “Sara”. I called her a “bad name”, and when Sara found out, I was terrified. Sara’s parents took great pleasure in calling other children’s parents to let them know all the evil things their children were doing. Many of my friends were punished after these calls.
Sure enough, my mom received a phone call from Sara’s father that night (the rest of Sara’s family was muted in the background on a second phone). “Mr. Sara” told my mom that I had called Sara the “B-word”. Sara’s parents felt that I needed to be dealt with strictly. They felt that I needed to be grounded, or yelled at – preferably both. Maybe they were hoping for the mouth-washed-out-with-soap treatment. Instead, Mom calmly explained to Mr. Sara that if I had said that, it obviously meant I was frustrated. She told him that she would work with me to find a way to appropriately deal with frustration. Mr. Sara was not happy. You could feel the muted hostility from Sara ’s family on the other phone. Mom said that no other action would be taken against me, and that maybe we girls should be separated so that I could have some breathing room.
You are probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with the war? I believe it has everything to do with the war. It shows that differences in lifestyles have nothing to do with who is wrong and who is right. Who is to say if Mr. Sara or if my mom was right on how I was dealt with? “President Bush led an invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Bush has not won supporters for the war, nor has he produced any justification for the sacrifice of Americans and Iraqis” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2005). If Bush had no justification for the war, because we all know the truth about there being no weapons of mass destruction, could it be people who support the war just don’t like the differences in the Iraqis’ beliefs versus their own? Do they believe that anybody that is not like them is evil?
There have been 4,152 recorded U.S. casualties, 30,568 men and woman who are wounded – 20% of those have brain and spinal injuries, and untold numbers of soldiers who have been psychologically injured (Congressional Research Service). Are those numbers worth a war that has no validity? Deaths and injuries to our own people aren’t the only thing that makes this war ridiculous. America spends $12 billion per month in Iraq (NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 20, 2007). 
We are spending money that we don’t have on something that could end right now. The Iraqi’s don’t like our forces being in their country. They want, have the right to, and have the funds to take control of their country. While their country has a huge surplus of funds, our country has a historically large deficit. President Bush signed a bill in June, 2008, approving about $200 billion more for the year 2008 to be spent on this war, which brings the amount spent close to $800 billion. 
Do I think America should leave Iraq? Yes, I do. We have no justification for this war. Innocent men and woman are dying everyday in the line of duty, thousands upon thousands of our soldiers are wounded, not just physically but also psychologically, and this unnecessary war keeps digging us into a deeper hole of debt. As Barack Obama said in his Senate speech, “I certainly do not oppose all wars, but dumb wars – rash wars. Because there is no decision more profound than the one we make to send our brave men and women into harm’s way.”