 When our son called the other night and asked what we were doing, I told him we were watching the war. A very strange thing, I think, to be saying. I was wrapped up in a blanket, listening to CNN. I do that often lately.
When I watch soldiers rush through buildings with their guns, I hope they will be OK. And when a reporter singles out a soldier for an interview, I hope the soldier's mother or wife or child is watching. I see the skies over Baghdad lit up and smoky from bombs and wonder just what happened when a bomb hit and hope no one is hurt.
It's like reality TV, a survivor show with deadly consequences. I hate survivor shows, and I hate war.
I'd hoped the idea of this war was just tough talk to get the United Nations into action and disarm Saddam. And then I hoped that all those soldiers sent over to Iraq were some kind of bluff the administration had cooked up to scare Saddam Hussein into submission. (I really did.)
Then I hoped the Saudis and other Arab nations who said they also wanted Saddam out would step up with a plan to waylay what seemed to me to be a blind drive to war. Anything I hoped but this war. I sent letters and even stood with a couple of hundred others in a protest before the war began.
Then the war started, and now as I watch the war unfold on TV, I struggle with a new reality. For whatever reason we got into this war (something I still can't figure out), and for all the terrible consequences of war, and in spite of the fact that much of the world is against what we are doing, we can't pull out now. We have to stay and finish this war because if we leave, it's clear we will have set the Iraqi people up to suffer even more under the cruelty of their own leadership.
So now I'm back to hoping.
I hope that we will liberate an oppressed people. I hope that the Arab world will some day agree. I hope this war will be quick because some yet unknown set of circumstance will make that possible. I hope the killing will stop and our people can come home. I hope our country and the rest of the world will not be torn apart because of this war. I hope Sadam and his cruel cronies will be attacked by a sudden wave of fear and leave the country and that all of Iraq will dance in the streets because they are free. And that would make my here-comes-the-calvary, American heart feel the war might have been the right thing to do. I can hope can't I?
Sandy Sims is the editor of The Courier. Contact her at 408.200.1055 or ssims@svcn.com.
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