Lightning

by

Roy Morrison

Sam's on the mound. I'm catching. He's 14 now. Taller than me. Torquing his body, showing me his back as he winds up. His four-seamer hits the catcher's mitt with a resonant baseball snap. The way it's supposed to be.

Almost every day he's a little bit better. Every week a little bit bigger. In the batting cage I can hit his almost good fastball, if he doesn't try to change speeds or come inside. As for his real fastball, I have to start striding almost the same instant the ball leaves his hand to rocket past the plate.

In Babe Ruth League, we try to do things with class—as best we can. During late afternoon games this year, there were almost always thunderstorms gathering, or threatening, or exploding over the field.

Umpiring, or sitting in the stands, at the first flash of lightning—hopefully still miles away and we haven't waited too long— I'd jump up and yell lightning and stop the game. A dad protecting my son and everybody's kid. Our job is to say the truth. Not sit on our hands.

Isn't it time that dads stand up and demand  the insane Iraq war stops now. The lightning flashes and the dangers to our kids are all too clear.

Any parent can do this. But now I'm saying it's time for the dads.

Instead of peace making,  we're treated to confident and bemedaled General Petraeus,  screaming eagle emblem on his shoulder,   a parade of  politicians  in his wake, assuring us that  because of  the surge the war  is now going well. Slaughter's supposedly down since our boys and girls  fill the Baghdad streets. And deployments  may  not  have to be extended past fifteen months a pop. Next year, force levels might even drop by a few brigades. And when the job is done in another eight or ten years,  Iraq's politicians bought off  and our oil secured,  it'll be mission accomplished after  thousands more U.S. dead and  tens of  thousands more wounded.

My son-in-law Ryan is a Capt. in the Air Force. He's served one tour in Iraq.  If George Bush and his Congressional collaborators aren't stopped he'll be back there. And then, before you know it, it'll be Sam's turn.

It's time for fathers to shout lightning and stop this madness.  It's time for us to demand this war stop before another one of  our kids  gets maimed or killed.

War, General Petraeus assures us, is the best and only path toward peace.  War and sending thousands of more of our kids to their deaths or mutilation is the responsible thing we need to do for the Iraqi people. Continuing  the war, succeeding in counter-insurgency in the desert will be evidence of  our kindness toward the Iraqi's  whose country we have  blockaded and starved and then bombed and invaded to destroy weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

It's time for fathers to say enough. Enough of our kids sacrificed on the alter of imperial expediency. Enough of our kids killed to convince some historians, somewhere, sometime that Bush and Cheney's Iraq catastrophe was  in our supposed national  interest.

            We  don't need any more war plans, or heroic generals  rescuing victory from defeat paid for with years and years of more spilled blood. We need to pursue paths leading toward peace, and to bring our kids home. We need a peace surge in Iraq led by diplomats, not false confidence in redemption and democracy through violence and rivers of blood.

Lightning. It's not in the distance. It's all around us.

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Roy Morrison is Director of  the Office of Sustainability at Southern New Hampshire University.

His latest book is Markets, Democracy & Survival (www.RMAenergy.net).