Didn’t expect it, ever, did we, that Elizabeth Smart would return to her family, and in a real way, to each of us, her national, extended family? Though there is no poll to assess the amount of joyful tears that flowed in private homes, hotel lobbies, churches, mosques, coffee shops or airports, they offered relief from the heartache of her physical and psychological captivity.

She was our child; she is our child. She will always be so in the troubling rehabilitation of the months and years ahead. The majority of us will pray and respect her need for privacy, while hoping against hope that the media will do the same.

Even as we celebrate this end-of-winter gift, we cannot help but contrast our joy over this one child’s return with the prospect of a 21,000 pound bomb falling upon thousands of the children of Iraq.

Bob Herbert, in the March 13 edition of The New York Times, stated that in this war Iraqi children would suffer the most, and recalled interviewing a number of people at the Independence Mall, who seemed indifferent to this possibility as they went about their shopping missions.

“I got no sense that they thought of war as a horrible experience. No one mentioned the inevitable carnage. No one spoke as if they understood that war is always hideous, even if it’s sometimes necessary.”

He tells us that today one out of every eight Iraqi children dies before the age of five. The picture will get worse, as Herbert quotes the U.N. officials saying that plans by the United States to feed the population after the war are inadequate and food supplies could run out in a matter of weeks.

The executive director of Unicef told Herbert that, “The area we’re very concerned about is water and sanitation. There’s very little ground water in Iraq. At least half of the water has to be treated. .. children would be the most vulnerable.”

There’s more insanity, friends. In Georgie Ann Geyer’s Chicago Tribune, March 14 issue, she quotes a panel of high-level officials brought together by the Council on Foreign Relations:

“The cost of only postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence. It concluded that President Bush has failed to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs of Iraq.”

And who is going to sacrifice to pay for this postwar reconstruction? You, and you, and you. Can you afford the extra taxes for decades? Will you be able to pay off the mortgage on your home by age 65? What about college tuition? Medical insurance? Or buying a new car when the old one self-destructs at 100,000 miles?

Already, the government is issuing contracts for reconstruction. Not to worry. Everything is under control. Do you think they would sell us over the financial rapids into personal bankruptcies to pay for building bridges and new airports in Iraq that we have first paid to destroy?

This morning, between brushing my teeth and putting on the coffee, I thought about the pending evil of war and asked myself: “ Is not this an insane perversion carried to the nth power?” I know, I know. The TV news paints a rosy scenario of taking out Saddam Hussein and making the world a safe and tidy place for all God’s children. No muss. No fuss.

Yet, while drinking that first cup of a pick-me-up, I found in today’s issue of The New York Times, March 14th, that Paul Krugman shares my apprehension about the possible instability of our leader in his column, “George W. Queeg,” suggesting that foreign policy may well be Bush’s quart of strawberries:

“...more people than you would think – including a fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department, and, yes, the Pentagon – don’t just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America’s leadership has lost touch with reality.”

Krugman goes on to state that: “Mr. Bush’s inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don’t work on the rest of the world. ...They’ve warned other countries that if they oppose America’s will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet, still the world balks.”

From “The Nelson Report,” an influential foreign policy newsletter, Krugman quotes: “It would be difficult to exaggerate the growing mixture of anger, despair, disgust and fear actuating the foreign policy community in Washington as the attack on Iraq moves closer, and the North Korea crisis festers with no coherent U.S. policy ...We are at the point now where foreign policy generally and Korea policy specifically, may become George Bush’s ‘Waco.’”

Elizabeth Smart is home, but it will be years before she will walk in trust and peace.

The same can be said for millions of us who no longer trust President George Bush. What if foreign policy is Bush’s quart of strawberries, and his buddies Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard N. Perle are pouring the cream and sugar? Scary for us, scary for everyone here and in Iraq.

Eventually, bridges will be rebuilt. Oil wells will cough up black gold. But there’s nothing we will be able to do about little children who will never breathe or hug their parents or play with trains again. Dead is dead.

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