Couldn't Express It Any Better

The following is a letter from the April 5th issue of The Nation, Letters, submitted by one of its readers, Marianne Brown, of South Haven, Michigan. Sometimes you run across something, and you realize the truth that it speaks just can't be expressed any better.

One Woman's War

South Haven, Mich.

I am furious. I knew when the neocons stole the Florida election, things would go sour, and, yes, I marched three times against this cabal. But little did my husband and I know then that the election would effectively take his son, my stepson, over to Iraq. I have followed this barbaric slaughter from the beginning. I watch it with new eyes now. I wonder every time an explosion occurs or a soldier is killed, Is that my loved one?

His name is Michael. He's 21. He's an Army reservist. No, he didn't join the reserves to go halfway around the world to be part of the occupation of another country for a bunch of neocons who have been planning this for years. He went into the reserves for training so he could be a police officer someday. (You see, they think like that at 21. They think that's a good idea, no matter what you tell them.) He was a weekend warrior, a kid who lacked worldly experience and hoped for a college education.

A beautiful young man is somewhere in Iraq right now, sent over with scoliosis (the Army conveniently lost his X-rays) for no damn reason except to prop up short-term profits and giveways to US corporations. We don't know if we will ever see him again. What we do know is that he just walked into a civil war that is erupting daily into unadulterated hell on earth. We know he may come home in a box, or maimed for life, or psychologically damaged beyond comprehension.

You cannot imagine the anger we feel as we watch the laughing, tittering talking heads on corporate TV run puff pieces as news and ignore the horrors of wondering where a child is in Iraq: Will he come home? Is he OK? What's it like for him to endure 120-degree heat? Is he afraid? Will someone be with him if he dies or is wounded? Will someone hold his hand and tell him we love him?

That child is ours. He does not belong to the neocons. They don't care who these kids are. They demand warm bodies to send into this black hole they created. I will spend every breath of my life working to get that lowlife fratboy dragged out of the White House in chains. This is too much to bear. --Marianne Brown.


We reprint this letter in honor of Ms. Brown. . . and all mothers of soldiers everywhere.