The AIDS activist organization ACT UP originated a slogan “Silence = Death” that’s how I feel about the Iraq War. That’s why I was especially struck this week by the words of former Senator John Edwards when he spoke at Riverside Church during a service honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday. “If you are in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options.” The NY Times reports he said that members of Congress “have the power to prohibit the president from spending money to escalate the war,” adding “Use that power.” Edwards went on to say that the government of Iraq must be pressured into taking responsibility for the country’s own security. “The best way for that to happen is for America to make it clear we are leaving Iraq,” he said, “and the best way to make clear that we are leaving is to actually start leaving.”

I heard today that Senator Hillary Clinton took personal umbrage at Mr. Edwards comments…too bad so sad. I’m sorry that she felt singled out by those remarks my personal feeling is that she and other members of the Democratic Party haven’t done enough and perhaps have been more concerned about their own political careers and less concerned about the safety and security of our men and women in uniform. I make an exception for Senator Russ Feingold who has been an outspoken anti-war activitist for some time and God bless him for it. Edwards was far more charitable simply saying that he wasn’t singling any one individual out, he was pointing out that cutting off funds to wage war was an option and certainly an effective one. He also harkened back to the Vietnam War and tactics used back then to end the war, tactics that were encouraged by Dr. King.

My rage over this war has been building to a point that I’m at the end of my rope. There was a full page ad in the NY Times last week calling for President Bush’s impeachment and calling for a nationwide march on Washington D.C. on March 17^th, the 4^th anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. As we enter the fourth year of what seems to be a war without end, as we move past the 3,000 fatality, as we become numb to the futility of the war and the endless barrage of violence in the streets of Iraq, I grow more and more enraged at our President and his stupidity, his obstinance, his arrogance and most of all his lack of compassion for the pain felt by the victims of this war and their families. The turning point for me was the tribute to the 3,000 casualties in the NY Times. You see I actually took the time and the effort to look at each of the men and women’s photos and wept as I read their names and it tore me apart to realize this entire fiasco has accomplished nothing. This entire war has been some stupid, prideful, Neo-Con experiment that just didn’t work out and the old white men that devised the plan can’t seem to call it quits. Meanwhile a group of predominantly young, white, men from rural areas of the United States are voluntarily, fighting and dying or being critically injured in this ongoing battle for absolutely nothing. I literally can’t take it any more.

When this surge, escalation, augmentation or whatever the Bush administration is calling it this week was announced I was infuriated but not surprised. I’m furious that Bush and Cheney have the balls to say that their critics have no plan to counter their troop escalation which is categorically false. The Democrats and several vocal Republicans including Senator Chuck Hagle (God bless him) have offered a variety of plans which all include phased or immediate withdrawal of our troops. Most sane individuals are in agreement that the Iraq war can’t be solved militarily and diplomatic relations must be restored in that portion of the world. The Iraq study group’s work has apparently been rejected out of hand and political or military leaders who disagree with the President have been fired or pushed out of the inner circle.

So…on and on it goes. And our children are used as cannon fodder for a President who refuses to give up, who has no track record of success and inspires no one’s trust at this point. On top of all this, I just learned that our self-proclaimed War President has set a new record for the most days off of any American President in history. George W. Bush has spent 365 days at Camp David and 405 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the last six years. That’s more vacation time than ANY U.S. President in history. Pretty amazing that with all of the crisis we’ve endured as a nation, that doesn’t seem to have impacted George’s vacation time. That infuriates me. Hell…when former President Gerald Ford passed away, he couldn’t be bothered to cut his vacation short and do a former Republican President the courtesy of getting back to Washington in time to greet his widow and family when they returned to our nation’s capitol. I thought that was the height of rudeness.

The bottom line for me is this. I’m going to Washington on March 17^th and I’m taking my 17 year old son. Simply because I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore. I hope hundreds of thousands of people show up in the streets of our nation’s capitol to tell this lazy ass, stupid, lying; President that war is not the answer. That we won’t allow any more of our blood to be spilled in our name or for this religious, tribal war that is thousands of years old and won’t be solved in our life times or may never be solved ever

Enough is enough. Silence does equal death and I will be silent no more.