sad day

Sadly, the chaos that we daily ignore in news reports coming from Iraq was not that unexpected. At least not to those who had their eyes open and were not living in some dream world where one very bad man is responsible for all the world’s woes, and removing him will magically make everyone love us, the great liberators.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Slowly, I have seen my friends and co-workers (the non peace activist types) come to the realization that we have created a mess in Iraq to put it mildly. In reality we seem to have sparked a bloody civil war, one that will most likely create more instability, unrest and terrorism in the world rather than the peace and safety it was nominally motivated by.

Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog agency he heads, won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Peace today. The Washington Post article had a quote that grabbed me...

In an interview with The Washington Post last fall, ElBaradei said the day the United States invaded Iraq "was the saddest in my life." It was not because he was a fan of Hussein, but because he was so sure Washington's assertions about weapons stockpiles and a secret program would be proved wrong.

Yup. Doesn’t feel good in this case, being right, even if you do win the Nobel Peace Prize. The thousands who have died. The thousands who will die. And for what? What purpose is being served, has been served? The reasons most Americans supported the war (wmd, etc...) have been proven wrong. And every day is a sad day.

And so I pray for peace. I pray for those with eyes to see. Those with ears to hear. Those with hearts to love. All of our brothers and sisters. Across the globe. One human family. And I pray especially for those who will lose their lives and loved ones in Iraq today.