Mon, Feb. 14, 2005
The real state of the union
by Celeste Zappala, MFSO Member and Co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. Celeste's son Sgt. Sherwood Baker, age 30, was killed in Baghdad on April 26, 2004.
MY SON Dante and I watched the State of the Union with the sound low, trying to discern some truth amidst the choreography of clapping and fawning.
I listened closely to the misleading diatribe on Social Security. No, the system does not go bankrupt in 2042, but right now Medicare is in a crisis and Medicaid has become the most expensive budget item in many states. All the while a growing number of Americans become uninsured, including 11 million kids.
We listened to Mr. Bush dance with the truth: the environment, energy, education.
Then the heartbreak. When fallen soldier Bryan Norwood's parents - who had written to the president - stood to be recognized, I wept with them. I know the agonized look in that woman's face, it is in my mirror. I too lost a son in Iraq.
I too have written and called the White House, yet there has been no response. On Jan. 19, five members of the Gold Star Families for Peace tried to see Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon; we were turned away by armed guards.
Is my family's loss any less valuable because I oppose the war? Why are our voices ignored? Why were our children called up to protect their homeland from imminent threats that have all dissipated in the sandstorm of deceptions?
When we buried my son in May, I vowed to tell the truth for him: The war is a betrayal, the justification for it a moving target.
Since the last hurrahs of the evening, more American soldiers have died, and the deaths of Iraqis are purposefully uncounted. My son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, died performing his duty looking for the weapons of mass destruction many months after everyone agreed there were none.
The fact remains that this president who is loath to count the American dead, and refuses to allow their coffins to be pictured, was willing to display the parents of a fallen soldier- and following the teary ovation, he laid the groundwork for the next war.
Celeste Zappala
Philadelphia