by Missy Comley Beattie
âSecond-guessing
is not a strategy,’ Bush said in his State of the Union address, but
when you have no strategy, second-guessing becomes one.
We
have heard it all before(the lies, lies, and more lies. These are the
lies that killed my nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley.
These are the lies that have resulted in the deaths of almost 2,250
American troops and over 100,000 Iraqis, many of them children.
âStay
the course,’ the president said again. How many times do we have to
hear this? We are not honoring our fallen by remaining in what CNN’s
Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour recently called a
âblack hole.’
âThere is no peace in retreat,’ Bush poetically
stated, but the truth is that there is no peace in war and there is no
peace for the relatives of the dead.
âThe state of our union
is strong.’ There is no strength in what is divided and this president
who marketed himself as a uniter, not a divider, has created a huge
chasm between the rich and the poor. His touch has contaminated honored
institutions and the only uniting under Bush’s watch is the matching of
money with more money for his already wealthy friends.
Last
night, while Bush’s assault was about to be inflicted, I stood at Times
Square with other speakers on a platform in front of a huge crowd at an
event sponsored by The World Can’t Wait. I was there to represent my
club of losers, Gold Star Families for Peace, those who have lost a
loved one in a war based on the lies that Bush continues to spew. While
he was telling the electorate that the terrorists use fear to control
us, I was telling the audience about my nephew.
I said, ‘My
father used to say that grief is self-pity. He doesn’t say this
anymore. Grief is so much more than a shattered heart. It’s an
evisceration. The world can’t wait for Bush to feel pain. He is
incapable of compassion. The initiative rests with us.”
I, unlike Bush, didn’t need a Teleprompt. I spoke from my heart.
Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine.
An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq,
she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel
last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase
J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political
articles.