sacrifice and loss

Saddam Hussein was executed as Eid al-Adha began - a Muslim holiday to commemorate the sacrifice of Ismael, son of Abraham and one of the prophets of Islam. The feast of the sacrifice.

Based in that belief of something higher, sacrifice has survived well beyond the times of Ismael as the most desparate and honorable route for achieving good in our world. It is always permitted and often encouraged. When an act of the will is framed as "sacrifice," it is somehow above criticism.

When Saddam was being taunted at the gallows, he must have envisioned himself above the jeering observers both literally, on an elevated platform, and figuratively in the rankings of honor, manliness, and sacrifice. Unsound reasoning for the disturbed leader who oversaw a murderous regime, but reasoning which both individuals and societies fall back on nonetheless, in self-defense, to justify loss.

Sacrifice is potentially dubious when it entails expectation of something in return, but it is this type of calculation that characterizes almost all human decision-making: give something in order to receive something else that is more useful or more gratifying. Those who are willing to give something valuable or dear are all the more revered for their sacrifice. When we claim to be making a sacrifice, we can only hope that there is some tending the scales of justice and due reward.

Then, there are those situations of loss without reason, compensation, or meaning which we, try as we might, cannot seem to fit into the framework of sacrifice and justice. Iraq is, just as Lebanon was and may be again, violence with no victor or vanquished. It is loss on top of more loss - loss for all sides. Losses of credibility and legitimacy, lost lives, lost money, lost opportunities and lost time. There is nothing to be won here anymore.

Maybe it is for these reasons that, finally, 58 percent of our country wish this president would just, well, LEAVE.

I resent this administration enormously. I think that stubborn warmongering without any acknowledgement of its possible consequences is immoral. But, when I went to the antiwar protests on the mall this weekend, I felt like I was watching myself four years ago: hopelessly and powerlessly chanting: "What do we want? PEACE. When do we want it? NOW!" This time, though, I don't know of any frat boys who are sitting in front of the news cheering "Yeah! Fuck Iraq!" as they watched the flashes of light explode in night footage from Baghdad. This time, I don't know anyone who doesn't want peace, including the much maligned neocons. We all want peace - as I believe all people do in the midst of war - but it is this unstoppable and self-perpetuating violence that is the greatest tragedy of our time.