It Doesn't Have to Be That Way    

     How much the words we use about Iraq have changed!  Slightly over a year ago it was all about WMD’s and imminent danger.  Then it was about freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein and how we were liberators and not conquerors.  Then the goal became one of establishing democracy.  Along the way liberation switched to occupation.  Now that there is armed opposition to our occupation the word we hear is pacification. 

     For anyone with even a little historic memory, talk of pacification becomes very ominous with shadows of Vietnam, the Philippines and the Native Americans.  Is that the path we want to take now in Iraq – the quiet that comes with death and destruction?  It doesn’t have to be that way.  That is one of the lessons of this religious season.