Soldiers With Peace Activist Parents to Wear Special Uniforms in War
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

There have been a lot of parents of fallen U.S. soldiers recently in the press. The way they act is as if their sons should not have been killed in the war because they are peace activists. News flash to these parents: Your kids look just like the rest of the occupying enemy in Iraq. Kids whose parents are "peace activists" do not have special colored clothing that signals their parents are peace activists to the fighters in Iraq. And what good *is* your peace activism, if you simultaneously send your kids to war? Do these peace activist parents not realize that the first line of peace activism is in your own HOME? Get off those overpasses with peace signs and get into your kid's life if he is enlisting in the armed services! Do these peace activist parents not realize that it was their son or some other person's son? And their son was the invader? The game is war, and the aim is to kill. Why are they all of a sudden just now getting the gravity of the situation?

Is it that these people did not care about others dying until their kids died? Why did they let their kids go? I know it sounds terrible, but I would literally break my son's legs before I would let him leave to Iraq to kill some other mother's little boy. I would rather go to jail and break his legs, than to allow him to go to war and come home dead, after killing others. I don't care about this "free will" argument. There are certain parental responsibilities here. There is a traditional war song in America that goes, "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier, I brought him up to be my pride and joy, who dares to place a musket on his shoulder, to shoot some other mother's little boy? Let nations arbitrate their future troubles, it's time to throw the sword and gun away. There'd be no war today, if mothers all would say, I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."

There is this whole tough love/"brat camp" movement in America where "liberal" parents are somehow willing to intervene in their kids' lives against their wills when drugs are involved. Yet when it comes to their kids making the biggest and deadliest mistake of their life, joining the U.S. military to support a hostile illegal occupation in Iraq, they have a hands off policy. If you are a "peace activist" parent who would be willing to do an intervention on your kids over drugs, but would not do the same if he tried to enlist in the military, that is on your family's head, but it makes no sense to me.

I feel that the woman camping outside the president's ranch right now is mostly concerned with relieving her guilt, not in stopping the war. If she cared about stopping the war, she would not have provided the military with soldiers. And she would have protested as vehemently BEFORE her son was dead. We are now listing about 2,000 American soldiers dead from our illegal occupation of Iraq on the American nightly news. Yet the amount of Iraqi soldiers, children, and mothers, that we, Americans, have killed in Iraq is exponentially higher. For every sobbing white peace activist mom in America, there are hundreds of sobbing mothers in Iraq, and they ain't getting the press the woman at the president's ranch is right now.

There is a certain air of white middle class privilege about her protest at the president's ranch right now too. What mother in poverty could afford such an action? I believe if she was a welfare mom who just lost her son, she could not afford to sit at the president's ranch like that. Would she bring her other kids with her to the protest? How long do you think it would take for Child Protective Services to show up at her encampment if she was there with her young kids? And who is paying for her sitting there? Has she quit her job to do this? How does she eat while she is not working? Who is paying her rent as she sits outside Bush's ranch? Is she now risking homelessness, unemployment and the loss of her other kids to do this protest as a welfare mom would? I sense money and sustaining this protest never entered her mind. I sense nothing in her life is in jeopardy from this action, and she can sit there as long as she wants because she is from the middle class.

I also believe it is because she is white and middle class that she has not been arrested. I honestly believe if that was a poor black woman agitating for Bush to see her, she would have been forcibly removed by violent cops already. I think the reason they are letting her stay there, with all the press is 1) she is not perceived as a threat due to her class and race, and 2) she already has shown she will send her kids to war while simultaneously saying she is a peace activist and that is what the government WANTS so they see no threat in her at all. They see, as well as do I, the totally hypocritical stance she has taken, and look at it more with amusement than a need for defense against it.

Peace activists who send their kids to war are now acting shocked that death could come to their child! Somehow they had believed it could not happen to them, just like teenagers who feel they can do any stupid trick and survive because they are immortal. If you supported murder as your son's profession, and he comes back killed by others who also have killing as their profession, can you really expect sympathy? Is it really shocking that American soldiers are killed in a hostile occupation of Iraq? Isn't that what they are there for? To kill or be killed? That is why my son can't go to the Iraq war. I will not allow it in our family. I am not willing to let him kill others and to only launch an outcry once mine is dead. I am willing to put up a stink before my kid is dead in this war. And I am willing to stand up against the government taking my draft aged son as well. But to just hand over your son, giving him support in his choice to be a soldier in Iraq, while still claiming you are a "peace activist" is ridiculous. The first thing peace activists should be doing is keeping their own kids out of the military! That seems incredibly obvious. And to not do so, and only cry out once your child is dead, well, that is just too little too late, as utterly callous as that sounds.