Freedom and death

Is a ton of Iraqi flesh and marrow worth more than 100 pounds of American skin and bones? \nWhile thousands of IU students flocked to the sunny skies and soft-sand beaches of the East Coast and Gulf shores for spring break last week, about 100 students and Bloomington residents marched along Kirkwood Avenue March 15 to protest the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. \nA reasonable American might have expected to hear the staple statements of the four-year long nonviolent Bloomington peace movement: "Mr. Bush, what do you say, how many Iraqis have you killed today?" But no American could have prepared for another installment of the War on Terror theater of the absurd.\nMembers of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, among other protest groups, participated in a dramatic "die-in," in which community members laid on Kirkwood Avenue in front of the National Guard recruitment office until their bodies were outlined in chalk. "It is unspeakably appalling that more than 37,754 Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered," BPAC Organizer Timothy Baer said in a press release before the protest show. "The children of Iraq have been gunned down and blown up in their own streets, so we, in solidarity with them, will enter our streets and lie down."\nThe difference between the staged "die-in" March 15 and continuing child carnage that is the collateral damage of liberating Iraq is a matter of luxurious life versus premature death. As America embarks upon its fourth tour of duty spreading freedom and democracy in Iraq on the backs of 3,000 post-9/11 dead Americans, one constant has become increasingly clear: One dead-but-innocent American life is worth more than 10 dead-but-innocent Iraqis.\n"No president wants war ... My attitude changed on September the 11th -- when we got attacked," President Bush said Tuesday after a White House reporter challenged his decision to invade Iraq because of the "lifetime wounds" for both Iraqis and Americans. "We used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life."\nApparently the president missed the terrorist-like killer memo floating through the world before that day that spelled out the destruction of 17 dead American sailors aboard the U.S.S. Cole in October, 2000, 12 innocent U.S. citizens within the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in August, 1998, 166 innocent Americans working in the Oklahoma City Federal Building in April 1995 and six innocent folks in the World Trade Center's underground garage in February 1993. \nWhile America waits to realize the fruits of democratic labor and Middle East freedom in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis will continue to perish because their home streets are now our central front for the War on Terror. Picturesque purple-fingered peace signs are not proof that the current course of democracy is taking root in Iraq. \nWhy not civil war since America has yet to adequately arm the three-years-in-the-making Iraqi national forces so they can handle their brotherly insurgency?