What's "FUBAR?"

Today is the 5 year-anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by U.S. led coalition forces. This occasion is being marked by hundreds of bloggers across the net as they show their solidarity in a commitment that the United States should withdraw from Iraq. If you have some time today I'd encourage you to check the Iraq War Blogswarm blogroll linked above and read some of the other very moving and sometimes very personal stories about the war.

For those of us who were against this war since well before it began this has been a pretty frustrating five years. We marched, we wrote letters and we voted. None of that seemed to help. In fact: it seems like things have just gotten worse.

If you're like me the last five years have made you feel a bit powerless. But we don't have to feel that way. Here's a couple of modest suggestions to things we can do today to make things a little bit better all by our lonesome.

The first is to visit and consider participating in the Any Soldier program. Effectively it's a care package deal but more. Men and women serving in Afghanistan or Iraq post lists of items they're running short on - everything from socks to DVDs to alleviate the periods of boredom - and civilians stateside fulfil those wishes. Maybe we can't bring these guys home today but we can at least make their lives a little bit better.

My second suggestion is something a little more personal and something I feel strongly about, but hesitate to bring up. When matched against the gravity of the thousands of lives lost in the war in Iraq it just doesn't seem that important. Still...

Five years ago we lost a lot of stuff when President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq. We lost lives, treasure and our sense of national identity as a nation founded on universal principles of human rights. We lost much of the goodwill America had built up at the end of the twentieth century in fighting for these principles. We lost our moral stature as a nation.

We also lost our flag. I'm not sure how this happened or how it was even possible, but the people that supported this war were able to turn our flag into a bumper sticker. They were able to re-brand the flag belonging to all of us as a symbol supporting George W. Bush and his ridiculous decision to start a war in Iraq. They took it from us.

I want it back. So today I'm getting out my own flag out of mothballs, which I haven't flown since 2002, and hanging it in front of my house. I'm also embedding the flag on my page and am encouraging anyone who feels the same way and hasn't done so already to do the same thing.

Our flag was never theirs to take and it's been in their hands much longer than they deserved. Let's take the damn thing back.

No, no that one I save just for me.

For some reason I've been unable to get this YouTube video of a sailor who was serving in Iraq surprising his six-year old son and his class but for some reason it doesn't seem to show up.

Needless to say I found the whole thing pretty moving. Sure it's cheesy that there are cameras there but the kid's reaction is genuine and just breaks my heart.

Over at Fark both sides are bitchin' about the propaganda aspect of the piece. I guess I don't see what my fellow libs are complaining about. There is simply no way to see that boy and his parents crying and think that this war is a good idea.

Earn this.

"We are not descended from fearful men."

I won't bother to link to Keith Olbermann's takedown of Rumsfeld and this administration from last night. It's all over the net and I'm sure you've seen it. (What the hell. It's here. ) I just had a couple of thoughts while watching this barnburner.

The first is that Olbermann read one of the best speeches I've ever seen on broadcast television. Ever. He deftly turned Rumsfeld's proposition that the critics of the war in Iraq are appeasers of fascism, on it's head and effortlessly dovetailed that into the threat of American fascism as it's manifested itself through our history in names like Nixon and Joe McCarthy.

But more importantly it struck me for the first time as I watched Olbermann's speech that I've finally found something to be thankful of with regards to the Bush presidency. It's put me back in touch on a visceral level with what it truly means to be an American.

Over the course of the last couple of years I've read and re-read the constitution probably a dozen times. I've read the federalist papers for the first time since college. I've read supreme court decisions such as United States v. Butler and Griswold vs. Connecticut, even though I'm no lawyer. I just wanted to know what the constitution meant by "promote the general welfare" and what the Supreme Court saw as the limitations to our privacy.

I've read again that wonderful document that started it all: the declaration of independence. The words of which have blown past me without reflection every 4th of July. This time I thought about the words, about the frame of mind of the men who wrote that document telling the most powerful man in the world to "shove it." I thought about their stunning courage in that act. How they risked everything for an idea.

I've dug out my old high school civics textbooks and contemplated the seperation of powers. I can think of no other invention of the framers written into the constitution that meets the importance of that doctrine. Everything we are as a nation stems from that initial recognition by the framers of the constitution that even the best of men could be corrupted by power.

History's come alive for me. Particularly the middle part of the twentieth century. I have wondered for some time what the average German went through as the Weimar republic collapsed to the Nazi putsch. Why did so many good people just go along for the ride? Why were heroes so few and far between? I'm starting to better understand the answers to those questions.

My kids have come out for the better as well. They've participated in a civics lesson far more important than anything they could've read in books. They've learned by watching this president that leaders aren't infallible and that, in a democracy, the people are the ultimate check on the abuse of governmental power. That's why bad governments try and keep us afraid. They're afraid of the people.

So thank you President Bush for making me a better American. It may not have been your intention but that's the ultimate result. Through your ineptitude and disdain for the country you've actually done us a great service in forcing us to stop taking things for granted. I salute you for that.