Those who are familiar with psychotherapy know that one of the methodologies used is to help people "find their center" or live in "the now".
This is why Rabbi Michael Lerner's ad to end all ads is, itself, a non binding resolution which those few die-hards who still support the occupation of Iraq by American troops have already answered.
Far too many of us have signed far too many petitions and donated money to far too many "solid" causes that were sure to tug at the heart strings of The Regime in a way that no other peace movement approach had hit them previously.
The problem is no matter what reason one believes for why we carried out our horrific invasion of Iraq, it all deals with fortune telling. It never asks, "What's true for us now?"
All peace movement solutions do the same in an attempt to bring rationality to the argument.
It ends up being a game (a sad and horrible game, at that) of fortune telling intended to make sense of what's true for us now. It tries to convince others that our leaving Iraq will or will not have this or that consequence.
Like the reasons for the war itself, Rabbi Lerner's ad tries to predict the future and therein lies the problem. Convincing someone that a certain action will cause a certain reaction is fruitless.
Hasn't every reason for invading Iraq and, consequently, continuing to occupy Iraq been based upon the unknown, a guessing of the future rather than an inventory of what was true for us during the "now" that existed at the time?
Reason number one: If we believe The Regime, Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD and was either going to use them to attack the US or was going to give them to terrorists so the terrorists could attack the US. If we believe that The Regime had what it considered solid evidence that Iraq had those WMD, we didn't know what it was going to do with them. We never knew what it was going to do with them.
We could easily have guessed that Saddam was gathering such weapons to strengthen Iraq against Islamic radicals which he didn't want in his country.
We could have guessed that he planned to use them against Iran as Iraq's relationship with Iran was not very friendly while Saddam Hussein was Iraq's leader.
We could have guessed that he had them simply for defensive purposes as Iraq had previously been invaded.
Covert surveillance may have been able to tell us that Iraq possessed WMD, but covert surveillance never told us what Iraq was going to do with the WMD because that truth did not exist for covert surveillance at that "now".
This is why all of speeches by members of The Regime were based upon guesses of what Iraq could do with its WMD.
Michael Bonanno is a published poet, essayist and musician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of his poetry can be found at The Poetry Corner at OpEdNews.He is an associate editor for OpEdNews.
Bonanno is a political progressive, not a Democratic Party apologist. He believes it's government's job to help the needy and that leaving the people's well being to the so called "private sector" is social suicide.His CDs may be purchased at CD Baby.
