I'm supposed to be writing the last bits of analysis for my thesis right now. I just can't concentrate. What the hay is going on with this world of ours?

It's total mayhem. We have this goofball president who wasn't even the people's elected choice for president mobilizing an entire city's worth of young men and women to fight a war that nobody supports. They've been showering the poor people of Iraq with menacing leaflets for hours now, trying to show what a superior superpower we are.

As far as I can tell, we're just a big bunch of bullies.

I understand the argument that there is a mean and dangerous dictator hiding somewhere in the sand and he needs to be removed from power. I get that part. But why must we go to war?

That bad guy over there has made things worse by hiding his weapons among the citizenry, forcing the bad guys over here to bomb the heck out of everybody.

Ari Fleischer has been busy trying to prepare us 'mericans that there will be casualties. Why will those casualties end up being the innocents? Those same innocents who have suffered for years now under sanctions.

A few years back I visited Germany. I wasn't there very long because I just couldn't get over the pure evil that was in its history. I was looking at people, especially the older people, and thinking how they might have supported their evil dictator. They may have even supported the murders that resulted of that horrible war. The way I saw it was that they had allowed genocide to happen, blood to be shed in the name of a perfect race. How could they have allowed that to happen? Why didn't they rise up and overthrow that tyrant? I couldn't stay in Germany because the souls of all those dead people made the air too thick to breathe.

I am starting to understand what made that horrible chapter of history happen. I don't have the vocabulary to really say what I am trying to say, but I can feel it so strongly. Perhaps the people were just a little too complacent. Perhaps the people were punished for speaking their mind. Perhaps the ruling government didn't care what the people thought.

Just as in America, the ruling government doesn't seem to care.

My voice doesn't matter to those in power. My protest isn't loud enough or mean enough for them to listen. I feel like running up to the White House, throwing myself on my knees and begging. crying. pleading for another option. If I could, I would rip my hair out and shoot blood out of my eyes. I would voice a protest louder than the sound of a tower toppling in Manhatten. I would scream a cry of protest more piercing than the sound of a missile ripping through the air. If I felt it would mean anything to our president.

But I know it wouldn't.

I see now why people set themselves afire in protest.

I wish my clarity didn't come at such a cost.

I wish there was another day, another leader, another option considered.

I wish the television news didn't have a "countdown" to war in the corner of the screen. How convenient that the president decided to go to war during prime time. Television ratings will go through the roof. It will be bigger than when Cheers went off the air.