What Is One Life Worth?

When was the last time you’ve been to services for someone you know who has passed away?

Think about how you felt. Think about all the people around this person and their grief -– the numerous people who showed up at the funeral and at the gravesite, every one of them profoundly grieved.

Sometimes the grief is abated when it’s an elderly person who has had a long life or if it was someone who has been terminally, painfully ill for some time.

But when it is someone’s child - someone in the prime of life - the grief is geometrically larger. When it is an accident it is worse. Imagine that it is your child and he or she died in Iraq. The pain and grief must be unbearable.

About three months ago, my youngest brother died. I can still remember my father who is 87 saying over and over, “Your children aren’t supposed to die before you.” He suffered so much over my brother’s death and a few days ago told me he doesn't think about the past anymore. "I just can't think about it," he says.

He just shut down.

How many American mothers and fathers and families are going through what Cindy Sheehan is experiencing? How many Iraqi families?

I don’t believe that Bush doesn’t care about the dying young men and women. I think that like my father he has shut down his emotions. I think he knows this whole situation is out of his control; that he is overwhelmed and feels helpless. There are just too many parents to console, too much grief to confront, too many wounded soldiers coming home.

This war was a mistake. Our country needs to admit it and get our sons and daughters out of there -- out of harm's way. We need to do it now.