Memories of nine years at war in Iraq

I lived my childhood
against the stained wallpaper of the Vietnam War. My children have lived theirs
against the gnawing realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's
hard to believe that one of those wars is finally over.

As I grapple with the legacy
of our immoral misadventure in Iraq, the main thing that stands out is the
terrible, mind-numbing cost. More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers are dead and 33,000
wounded. An estimated 178,000 suffer traumatic brain injuries, more than 2,000
are amputees, and hundreds have committed suicide. Some estimate more than 1.4
million Iraqis died in the war, which cost more than a trillion dollars.

But my mind also turns to
some personal memories from the last nine years. I remember sitting in my
office listening to a news report  in
September 2002--at the beginning of my third year of seminary teaching--and
realizing that President Bush was bent on invading Iraq. I contacted Stanley
Hauerwas and floated the thesis that at this moment, pacifist ethicists and
just war ethicists could all agree: invading Iraq would be morally wrong.
Hauerwas agreed, and by September 23 we had crafted a statement and built a
list of more than 100 ethicists condemning the impending war.