It’s just one day short of a week since reading the article in the July 24th Sunday’s edition of The New York Times by Thom Shanker. Day after day, in a shopping mall, the grocery store, while walking along a neighborhood street, where children were riding their bikes and squealing with excitement, or kneeling in a silent church before Mass, Thom’s story has clung to my consciousness like a hermit’s hair shirt, irritating, yet somehow consoling in its ability to place this hidden war out in the open, uniting the reader with the honest complaints of the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, feeling mighty alone in the process..

Aptly named is Shanker’s piece: “All Quiet on the Home Front and Some Soldiers Are Asking Why.” Actually, it’s not as quiet as the soldiers suspect. They imagine our going about the daily tasks of life, some mundane, some somber, dealing with illness and deaths, some entertaining, such as children’s parties at McDonald’s, summer camps, guaranteed to create scholars in two weeks of remedial reading.

Yet, if our men and women in uniform could button-hole a passerby on Main Street for a cup of coffee or a stein of beer, almost without exception, not far below the surface will be found a terrible unease about this war and the sacrifices our troops are making.

Some things hurt too much for words to express, and this war, too far “over there” needs being brought home “over here.” We can begin by rising up with a million men, women and children marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, demanding that we will no longer accept our dead’s arriving home in the middle of the night, as though we were ashamed that they could not escape the bullets and suicide bombers to live to fight another day.

We can fly our flags at half-mast to tell ourselves, our troops and the world that it is not business as usual on Main Street, U.S. A., though it may appear so to those not privy to what troubles us day after day -- the deaths and maiming of our men and women in a war millions of us fought in any way we could to prevent.

If we do not march against the war today, it is because we are afraid, boxed in, with no way of escape other than that which would appear to be a denunciation of our fine, heroic women and men, who are frightened, lonely, weary, carrying on in a war many are coming to believe is unwinnable, no matter how many recruits (and their numbers are becoming fewer) are trained to replace the fallen.

Shanker tells us that senior administration officials are aware of the tension revealed in the troops’ complaining about being alone in fighting the war, and are opening discussions on whether to mobilize brigades of Americans beyond those already signed up for active duty or in the Reserves and National Guard. At the Pentagon and State Department, officials have held preliminary talks on creating a Civilian Reserve, a sort of Peace Corps for professionals.

How nice. Why not start at the top? Doesn’t that idea send a glow of confidence in every direction? Sorry, I can’t help but imagine Dick Cheney’s shipping ahead to Iraq the largest, reinforced bunker in the Pentagon’s catalog, complete with a set of china, linens, cutlery, and fine glassware from the White House. Of course, no one but a precious few officers would know of the exact location of the bunker, only that it must be far removed from any sound of gunfire or explosions to disturb his afternoon naps. Heart trouble and all.

What about Rummy? Certainly, the head of the Pentagon has won the honor to lead soldiers on the most dangerous of sorties. The problem is that the man who didn’t have the moxie to try diplomacy to avoid war would probably not be trusted to find his way out of an ambush without directions from a battle-hardened private.

And President Bush could take his favorite horse from the ranch and lead the entire army to battle, right off the highest cliff, after having made a deal with Karl Rove for a last-minute rescue, preferably out of sight of the troops.

This tongue-in-cheek version of the War of the Elite may sound a trifle disrespectful, but let me assure you, it is a kindergarten lesson in wartime strategy compared with what the troops may even now be using for entertainment.

A one-star officer has said that the absence of a call for broader national sacrifice in a time of war has become a near constant topic of discussion among officers and enlisted personnel.

Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said that: “discussions had begun on a program to seek commitments from bankers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, electricians, plumbers and solid-waste disposal experts to deploy to conflict zones for months at a time on reconstruction assignments, to relieve pressure on the military.”

Are these policy makers on Prozac? Do they fail to understand that the majority of Americans view Iraq as Bush’s war, along with his buddies, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz? Then, there are those who are profiting from keeping the war going, as well as the fat cats whose taxes seem to get lowered every time the debt zooms skyward. This is a rich man’s war fought primarily by the poor whose families couldn’t afford to send them to college to find a better way to make a living. If anyone thinks the wealthy are going to walk away from their 10-bedroom homes to drive through mine fields and eat packaged food, he or she may be on something more powerful than Prozac.

As for the middle-class citizens: engineers, electricians, plumbers, etc., they would not go to Iraq because they don’t believe it is either a just war, or one that their participation can possibly help. We’re in a quagmire, with leaders accustomed to life on golf courses, universities and endless policy sessions. We need more than prayer, but prayer is not a bad place to begin to try to get our bearings and to move ahead wisely, free of hidden agendas.

Lord, with what pride and greed have our leaders begun this war, sending our men and women into harm’s way. And with what sloth and political ambition have our representatives allowed them to do so, careless of our national interests, the safety of our people, and the Iraqi citizens we were promising to save

Please forgive us as a nation who have watched too much TV, failing to watch those at the public trough, robbing our treasury, our self-respect and care for one another.

This is a bloody mess, this war. Without your help, we see no way out of it, and nothing but death and terrible injuries for those who will fight to the last. Therefore, we beg forgiveness for our weakness, for courage and wisdom to right the wrongs, to bring our troops home and to leave Iraq a strong nation, able to defend herself from those who would mine her assets for their own aggrandizement.

Amen, dear Lord. Amen.

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