In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain’t they got no shame
– Nikki Giovanni, “The Great Pax Whitie”

On the eve of the anniversary of the war in Iraq, I think of the words of Charles Sumner, the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874. “Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud,” Sumner said. “I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.”

In this time of economic crisis, one has to wonder where this nation could be if it had not been for six years of involvement in Iraq. According to the Web site costofwar.com, the U.S. has spent approximately $606 billion, and that number rises every second. That equals more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in America.

The site allows you to come up with a cost for your state. For Virginia, the site estimates the war has cost about $16.5 million. With state budgets in such trouble, one has to think that $16.5 million would go a long way toward our children’s educations, paving roads, fixing bridges, and keeping rest areas open.

American educator Abraham Flexner, who died in 1959, said, “Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

And you might remember President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous speech of 1953. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.

And then there’s the human cost of the war. More than 4,200 members of the U.S. military have been killed. Coalition deaths include two Australians, one Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, five Georgians, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, one Korean, three Latvians, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians. Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths have been range wildly with the upper end being at more than a million. “Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood,” said Mahatma Ghandi in 1948.

And now six years later, we have to wonder what good has been accomplished. For those in the New River Valley who want to mark the war’s anniversary, the public is invited to a brief time of sharing, silence, and sound in the Prayer Room of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church (701 Church St. SE) on today, March 19, at 5:30 p.m. Attendees are asked to bring a reading, thought or experience to share if you wish. On Friday, March 20, at 5 p.m., an Iraq War protest will be held at the Virginia Tech Drill Field.

Tim W. Jackson is Editor of the New River Voice and agrees with Edwin Starr:

Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives

War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives

I said, war, huh
Good God, y’all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing