Military Wife Speaks Out ...

I love my soldier but hate this war

"Did you oppose the war before he had to go?" my grandmother asked me from the other side of the kitchen. The utter wrongness of the assumptions behind the question stunned me. She meant well, and others have asked before. But the question comes from a fundamental error: I wish I supported the war, but I do not.

I wish I could display a US flag with pride, sing "God Bless America" meaning every word, and put a "United We Stand" sticker on my car. It would be so reassuring to know that our cause is just, that going to bed lonely every night helps others to be free, that all the tears I have shed causes others to shed fewer tears. How reassuring it would be to know that my sacrifices are worth it; pain now will be rewarded by later rejoicing, if not by I, by others. I wish I supported the war.

But I do not and can not. My husband and I opposed the initial invasion; opposition which has continued even after my husband was taken from me and sent around the world to fight. It is so hard; every day I read the news, every day I understand more about what happened and what is happening. Every lie by the government is a slap in my face; the election results a body blow. My fellow Americans prefer a beautiful dream to reality. They can afford to dream; to them, the war is far away, like a video game or action movie. They can happily eat dessert believing that Saddam caused 9/11, that we found WMD, and that the war is making the world safe; they are encouraged to deny reality. But dreams do not equal truth.

I am suffering for lies and mistakes. So are my coworkers, my friends, my family, my husband. I want to scream my pain from the rooftops but no one wants to hear; everyone just wants to forget. It is too painful to thinking about so much useless suffering. There are so many horrible things in the world: genocide in Darfur, communities decimated by AIDS, children killed by the tsunami - it is easier just to close our eyes and pretend that the world is beautiful, rational, and fair. But that does not reduce the pain, only compounds it. The knowledge that others will not help is added to the pain.

Of course military families rarely oppose wars: we have the most to lose. It is too painful to add the knowledge that we are suffering pointlessly to our loneliness and worry. It is so much easier to believe the rhetoric, to sing the songs and wave the flags. But to do so is to deny reality; to obey our leaders unquestioningly is to betray the spirit of democracy and freedom. Neither I nor America can afford to pay that price.