True Cost

Odd noises at this early hour. One of the twins, most likely Abby, has a talking doll in bed with her and whenever she moves, the doll speaks. They’re both asleep down the hall. In the meantime, Boo, the cat, frets. “Who are these people and why are they here?”

I got my package from Amazon yesterday and began reading, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. And as I began reading, I was soon tired. A dozen pages and I was exhausted. The facts are so overwhelming! But, one thought grew important to me; a vital question for each presidential candidate should be, “Did you read this book?” No other questions after that.

So why do I buy a book that simply rehashes the terrible mistakes made by this administration? It’s over, right? I wish! If we don’t learn from these things we are doomed to fail again and again. And maybe there will come a time when there won’t be another ‘again’. What then?

We’ve been lucky so far; a succession of crooks and opportunists in the Oval Office has not sunk us…yet. But, I shouldn’t point solely to the White House as the source for all of our ills; our direct representatives, congress and senate, are equally guilty. Most of them abandoned their principles to follow a party line. So?