It's Finally Over -- and It Was Wrong
by Jim Wallis
10/27/11 03:28 PM ET
My son Jack was born just days before the war in Iraq began. So, for these last eight and a half years, it's been very easy for me to remember how long this horrible conflict has been going on.
Finally, as President Obama has announced, this American war will soon be over, with most of the 44,000 American troops still in Iraq coming home in time to be with their families for Christmas.
The initial feelings that rushed over me after hearing the White House announcement were of deep relief. But then they turned to deep sadness over the terrible cost of a war that was, from the beginning, wrong: intellectually, politically, strategically and, above all, morally.
The war in Iraq was fundamentally a war of choice, and it was the wrong choice.
From the outset, this war was fought on false pretenses, with false information, and for false purposes. And the official decisions to argue for this war and then carry it out were made at the height of political and moral irresponsibility -- especially when we see the failed results and consider both the human and financial costs.
This week, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a nine-term Republican from eastern North Carolina and long-time member of the House Armed Services Committee, spoke to the students of my class at Georgetown University. He called his decision to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq "a sin."
Even then, he didn't believe or trust "the intelligence" being used to support a war with Iraq, but confesses he feared the response of a "no vote" among his constituency in a district that includes Camp Lejeune and 60,000 retired members of the military.
Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, as was falsely implied, and had no weapons of mass destruction, as was falsely claimed and endlessly repeated...
For the full article, go to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/its-finally-over----and-i_b_1035939.html
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