March 20 | Three Years I REMEMBER seeing my first anti-Iraq invasion protest in the summer of 2002, driving through Seattle one Sunday afternoon. It was a long, long march of people through the quiet streets of a neighborhood I happened to be passing through, thousands protesting something that had not yet begun and which I could not really believe would happen. I could not imagine a lie so big. That was one year after the Sept. 11 incident, which was used as a huge and disgusting grandstand for the invasion. Everyone from the top of government to the lowest White House reporter, if you ask them outright, will tell you that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11 and yet that was the justification. Over and over again, the point was made, and is still being made, that Iraq was to blame for Sept. 11. It wasn't, but it was. It was, but it wasn't, really. Three years later, all the invasion of Iraq has brought is death, pain, misery, shattered families, fear, staggering national debt and profit for military contractors. And it may be the justification for the next war, if -- as seems to be the agenda -- Iran is the next country on the list to get bombed. To the extent that every single rationale for the invasion has been exposed as a lie, there are still people who will cling to those excuses by their fingernails. I remember going out one night in Seattle that autumn and talking to a friend I knew back in New York, a woman who was an activist and an idealist, and she said we needed to bomb Iraq because it would be good for women's rights; that Saddam had been mean to women. Today there are fewer people who will believe anything at all. Fewer, but not enough. Today there are more people who just cannot take the pain of this situation, who feel for every family that has lost a son or daughter, or two, or more; for everyone who has lost a parent or a husband or wife. There are more people who feel the pain of the lie that we are "spreading democracy" in Iraq. More, but not enough. To me, the deepest pain of this situation is the pain of my conscience. It is the pain of being an American and feeling personally responsible for what is happening, and that feeling is born of the deep belief that I hold that I am responsible for my country's actions. Yet what really shuts me down is the denial and silence that allows the war to persist. I agonize over the lies I read in the media -- lies which influence people to believe lies and to support endless murder for profit, but justified as some glorious policy. Am I dreaming? Am I not giving people credit? Is there some huge national or global uprising that I am missing? Some major newspaper crusading for peace and justice? Am I the one in denial? Must I accept that "these things take time"? I am also aware that I refuse to take any kind of mystical perspective on this grotesque situation. I cannot chalk it up to "a lesson for humanity." I cannot let it go with "this war is not real because God did not make it." I do not have the capacity to believe that somebody's God is going to intervene. I am disgusted to the point of nausea at that kind of condescending piety. And perhaps it is my lack of spiritual evolution, my lacking any trace of Zen detachment, the failure of my optimism, or the Devil getting me to lower my perception into that gutter where I feel the pain of people who are being murdered by my government, but I cannot stand back and let it all be. I cannot be silent, and I refuse to be silent. But I really don't know what to do, except to speak from my heart and my conscience. And not put on a uniform, or pick up a gun, or declare someone an enemy because of their religion or nationality. I don't know what to do except flatly refuse to believe the endless lies that spill from the fetid mouths and the dark, suspicious eyes of people I have a hard time accepting are human, but in whom I feel that I must somehow see the humanity. To say that the conduct of the United States in Iraq has thrown me into full-on spiritual crisis for three years would be an understatement. This holocaust, and the extent that deception about it is being perpetuated, has nearly drowned my faith. I know we have the power to stop it, but I just don't see that happening. Believing it's wrong is not enough. Feeling sorry for the people who we have killed is not enough. And I don't believe that having faith that "everything will be alright" is enough, either. So, three years after the United States, and yes, its accomplice England, attacked, invaded and occupied Iraq, with no justification and using fabricated evidence and with no regard for the humanity under its falling bombs, its depleted uranium shells and its phosphorous weapons, I feel paralyzed to do anything but express how I feel and tell the truth to the extent I know it. For the next three days, we're going to do that in photographs of fallen American and British servicemen and women. The point of portraying images only of coalition deaths is not to dishonor the Iraqis who have died or had their bodies and minds maimed. Anyone who opposes this war is fully aware of that vast, incalculable cost. Rather, the idea is that war is about national boundaries, our alleged defense, and the claim of national sovereignty. If that is the case, then let's glimpse at the human cost "we" have paid as Americans, in fulfillment of any claim of patriotism we may make -- remembering that every one of these photos depicting an American was, at one time, censored by the U.S. government. The war in Iraq is not about politics, terrorism, national policy, security, oil or any of the other hollow excuses that have been trumped up. All that it's about, in the end, is the consequences, and the price we are paying every day with our hearts and our souls. How much longer, and why?