In January 2003, Epictetus purchased from a sidewalk vendor an orange button about the size of a silver dollar and inscribed with the words, "No War in Iraq," written in black. Simple, bold, and highly visible from its position of display–pinned to the side of a messenger bag–it expressed all Epictetus wanted to express about the impending invasion of a sovereign country that neither had attacked us nor represented an imminent threat. And in the face of the prevailing attitude of bloodlust at the time, it seemed no timid gesture.
Being firsthand witness to death on a mass scale nearly 14 months earlier hardened rather than weakened a moral opposition to war forged over a lifetime, and affirmed a standing aversion to any ideology of which violence is an explicit or implicit tenet. (Interestingly, many of those who lived through the event itself, rather than viewing it on television, are generally reported to have developed a similar distaste for and distrust in the espousal and stated motives of armed conflict.) Purchasing the orange-and-black button was as natural and necessary as holding the hand of my then six-year-old son so that he wouldn't get lost in the crowds surrounding us on that city sidewalk–a moral choice, and an instinctive one.
Epictetus is moved to reflect on this by the comments today of Secretary of State Rice, who is being quoted as admitting mistakes in Iraq ("thousands," she bravely confesses). The black-and-orange button remained steadfastly pinned to the bag until, eight or ten months into the misadventure, a passerby pointed and said, "Yes, war in Iraq!"–not as a statement of support for it but as an acknowledgment: There was a war on, it had happened, and it was not going away.
Thousands of mistakes, Rice says. But she's being too hard on herself and on the men whose message she carries. There haven't been thousands. There's been just one. One outsized mistake whose consequences are the exact and timelessly familiar: wanton death, needless destruction, unconscionable suffering, immoral and inadequate justification–and the persecution of those opposed to the above.
So familiar, in fact, that knowledgeable statesmen, scholars, and soldiers of all stripes foresaw with unbelievable accuracy and exact detail just what would transpire, basing their predictions on the evidence history has supplied over and over again, as well as on the ample evidence at hand in early 2003. These unfortunately on-target observers didn't base their grim prognostications on nuanced philosophical and moral beliefs–but rather on data that was availble in abundant supply. Realists, in other words. And like the ordinary citizens forced to accept the actuality of the war and put away their buttons, they can only shake their heads now and say, with no glee or vindication or anything else but sorrow: See?
