War is Over! If you want it...

I was saddened at the beginning of this week--Memorial Day--to learn about Cindy Sheehan and her decision to take a step backward from her anti-war work. I saw Cindy a little over a year ago, at the Sacred Activism conference here in Washington, and I appreciated her passion, her commitment, and how much she wanted to spare other mothers the pain that she has herself experienced.

Just the day before, we watched "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," a documentary about how the U.S. government tried to disrupt the anti-war work of John Lennon, a man who was killed when I was in junior high school.

One of the things that kept coming back to me over the next days, and something that Cindy Sheehan's parting-for-now words brought to mind, was the ad campaign that John and Yoko had run in cities all over the world. War is over, if you want it.

I knew the war in Iraq was bad news from the start. I saw how they were selling this war, never giving the inspectors the time they needed on the ground to find out if the threat was real. I knew enough to know that although Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, it was not clear that war would bring better days to Iraq. I tried to end this war before it started. I marched, I called, I spoke out where I could. But unlike Cindy, I didn't sacrifice everything to try to end this thing. The last few years have mostly found me watching in sadness, feeling powerless to do anything that would matter.

So I keep thinking about those ads. We could end this war, if we were willing to put everyday life on hold long enough. If enough of us demanded it. If we were willing to pay the price of demanding that it end, instead of waiting and watching, knowing that we will pay eventually. Our children will pay. But not now, not today. Someday later. Of course, our soldiers and their families are already paying. But they have their missions, and most of them will continue to follow through on the oaths that they swore, no matter how pointless it may seem and however horrendous the immediate costs they will pay. It will not be up to them to end this war.

War is over, if you want it. Hmm.