Burningbird says that she’s no longer identifying her blog as a peace blog.
Most of us who have opposed Bush’s destructive strategies to free Iraq recognize what the reality is now. Shelley offers an intelligent perspective in her post that deserves to be read as a whole.
And she links to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that indicates there’s some disagreement in the Bush administration about who should control Iraq during its transition to a democracy.
Maybe that’s where our advocacy should focus now. The war happened despite all of our objections. The important issue now is, “now what?”

In a comment to my post below, Burningbird takes issue with my assertion that woman have always stood for peace. I am interested in finding links to information to support her assertion that “Women leaders have started wars as much as men have. And have been pretty nasty at times.” I don’t doubt that there have been women heads of countries who invaded other nations for reasons of power and wealth. But how many men compared to how many women? Can anyone point me to that kind of info?
Now, I’m a diehard Xena fan. I watch Alias. I love kickass women. I fully understand the dark side of the female psyche. I’ve taken that distrubing journey into mine. Why do you think my site is named after Kali?
I’ll have to find the time to research this, but it seems to me that in the course of human history, men have been the major aggressors in the major murderous wars for power. I’m thinking of the Crusades, for obvious one.
I’m suggesting that, perhaps, female heads of state in history have been able to rise to power because they opted to buy into the aggressive mode of the existing male-dominated power structure. So, it would stand to reason that they also would not hesitate to invade any less then men who have also risen to those positions (through the same methods and values). But just how many women are we talking about?
If one looks at the causes that women, in general, espouse throughout the world (in numbers greater than those of men) they are causes that advocate for taking care of living things in their various forms. (I don’t want to get into an argument about what’s a “living thing,” so don’t bother leaving a comment about that issue.)
More women than men are teachers, nurses, caregivers. I’m sure that there are statistics about that. It’s not that we are not capable of physically torturing and maiming, but that seems to be generally not our style. It is not that we are incapable of killing. It’s that when, push comes to shove, that’s an extreme more women than men, from what I see of history, go to great lengths to avoid.
There are men with “caregiving” rather than “aggressive” natures, and these are the ones who tend to become my friends. But, in my 63 years of meeting and interacting with men, I have found that these nurturers are far in the minority of men. On the other hand, I have always known plenty of women like that. Could my experiences as an active woman be all that off?

This is the commemorative

“Every day in combat training you had to yell out ‘Kill! Kill!’ and we would get into trouble if you didn’t shout it out, so often I would just mouth it so I didn’t get into trouble.” The recruits were also encouraged to hurt each other during hand-to- hand combat training. “I couldn’t do that so they would pair me up with someone who was very violent or aggressive.”
Mr Funk said many recruits were envious of those who were being sent to the Gulf. “They would say things like, ‘Kill a raghead for me – I’m so jealous.’
Stephen Eagle Funk, 20, a marine reserve who was due to be sent for combat duty, is currently on “unauthorised absence” from his unit. He faces a possible court martial and time in military prison for his action. , so begins the Guardians’s report on America’s first conscientious objector of this war.
Funk told the reporter:
“I would rather take my punishment now than live with what I would have to do [in Iraq] for the rest of my life. I woul be going in knowing that it was wrong and that would be hypocritical…. War is about destruction and violence and death. It is young men fighting old men’s wars. It is not the answer, it just ravages the land of the battleground. I know it’s wrong but other people in the military have been programmed to think it is OK.”
Telling the truth is courageous. Putting oneself in harm’s way for one’s beliefs is courageous. Putting the lives of others before one’s own is courageous. Standing alone against a tide of evil is courageous.
It is men like soon-to-be ex-marine Stephen Eagle Funk who are the true moral warriors — the real “good guys,” the heroes of this war who bravely take a stand against the evil that seems to be taking over the hearts of too many of my countrymen.

I don’t want to give aid and comfort to the enemy – I just want to be able to tell the truth.
Read the rest of his statement as published by his new employer.
Thanks to the ex-lion tamer for the link.

In between blogging bursts, I

I

While there’s lots of shots on CNN of military families supporting the war, I haven’t noticed any mention of the kinds of responses profiled in this Salon.com article. Or any mention of the organziation they’ve formed, www.mfso.org.
The article begins:
Military families who oppose the war in Iraq say there’s a special horror in watching this campaign unfold. Like everyone else who has a relative serving in the Gulf, they’re beset by a sickening anxiety that builds as the troops move toward Baghdad — and that paralyzes them every time another casualty is reported. For those who believe the war is unjust, though, there’s no pride in a
righteous cause to ease the terror, no patriotic sense of shared sacrifice to make sense of their families’ disruptions. There is just the helpless feeling that their loved ones might lose their lives for nothing.
Some telling, intelligent, and eloquent quotes from the story:
“It hurts a lot, sacrificing our children for a war that Bush took us into,” says Peter Hansen, a Navy dad in Palm Springs, Calif. “I picture my son going off to World War II and I really think I would feel differently. I’m not a pacifist, but I really feel something stinks about this, and every day I get more confirmation. I have an intuitive sense that Bush is not a good man.”
“I support my son and the troops 150 percent, but I also have tremendous feelings of empathy and compassion for the Iraqi people,” says Dreysus. “There’s a tremendous amount of conflict and confusion. It’s like a paradox that you’re holding inside your heart.”
“The other night on television, they said, ‘Here there was an antiwar demonstration, while here is what some people are doing to support our troops,'” Nancy Lessin recalls indignantly. “That formulation is absolutely wrong, and we’re trying to correct it everywhere we go.”
“The hardest thing by far would be to lose Joe in a war that was unjust and unnecessary,” Lessin says. “In that case, we think we would never, ever recover from our grief and never let go of our anger. That anger would be directed at this administration and the Congress that abdicated its responsibility and allowed this to happen.”
And this from a personal statement on the mfso website:
… I am concerned about the defective mission upon which President Bush is sending him. His dedication to country is being abused by a President hell-bent on an unjustified, unnecessary and