I Cogitate

...I got a letter from the office of the Global Peace Initiative of Women about one of the participants to the Dialogue of U.S.-Iraqi Women. This letter says better than I can what is going on there now, what the stakes are, what the effects have been of what we call “Operation Iraqi Freedom” -- and, most of all, what it highlights about our own situation in this country now.

The name of the Iraqi participant is being withheld -- for obvious reasons. According to a recent CNN report, more than 1,400 Iraqis have been killed this month, the deadliest month of the war for them so far.

"...She has lost her uncle and nephew recently in a bombing and so there is tremendous grief in her family. They have decided to try to leave Iraq for another Arabic speaking country as they say it is much worse now than ever before.

Women cannot wear slacks now. They cannot drive. They must be veiled and the bombings and shootings have increased manyfold.

She said when they were here in the United States during the meeting things were so much better. But now it is impossible to live there. There is hardly electricity. There is talk of turning off cell phones and even the Internet for a month or two. She has been unable to access her e-mail for many days. And when she walks to her work each morning she now fears for her life..."

"While thousands die abroad on our behalf, and thousands of children here have no medical insurance, and hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens can no longer afford to drive the cars they need to get to jobs where they get no benefits, have no pensions, and have no assurance of welfare assistance when that work ends, I am convinced that the possibility of being branded is worth the risk.

Morality is certainly a major issue in the United States today. But what morality? All of it or only some of it?

From where I stand, the issue of same-sex marriage is not at the base of U.S. decline today. At the base of U.S. moral deterioration today is political oligarchy, corporate greed and the complete breakdown of the kind of morality that is not only social but civil and Christian. That kind of morality, unfortunately, we haven’t seen for years, even from some of our moralists."

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