i don’t know what to say about the fact that our country is about to go to war other than that i am very, very sad. there are a million good, intellectual, rational arguments for why this is a bad idea, but for me, the human toll, the loss of life and the brutality of war is what frightens and saddens me. i don’t like to think that violence is ever a good strategy, but i could be convinced otherwise. the thing that makes me really angry is that it doesn’t seem like the president or his administration even once considered the human cost of a war. he didn’t acknowledge the implications of war, to us soldiers, to iraqi soldiers, to iraqi civillians, to us citizens in the wake of terrorist retaliation. it seemed like he never even gave peace a chance. i can live with someone saying, “i hear what you have to say, but i disagree”, but to be ignored entirely is a slap in the face. i don’t know what to say. when our country goes to war, “no war” doesn’t mean a whole lot. i guess all i want is peace. i want the war to be over as soon as possible. i want the us out of the middle east as soon as possible. i want my fellow americans to have the backbone to say, “yes, i support our troops, but i think the administration is wrong about this. let’s get it over with as soon as possible and see if we can repair the damage”. i don’t want unilateralism. what could be more beutiful than the idea of a world of neighbors. that we can resolve things peacefully, that we can live together, that there are more important things in life than living in fear, in worrying about preemption. please don’t make a world where we can’t live our lives with any meaning. i’m not asking this of the government because they aren’t listening. i’m asking this of my neighbors, of my community, of my family. in our own lives, in our own conflict, this isn’t the way we resolve things. we don’t go down the street and attack our neighbors – not because they don’t deserve it – but because we realize such barbarism isn’t worth it. for all the kids – we’re about to go on tour – what do you tell kids who are already politicized? of course they don’t support the war. all i can think of is that we need to appreciate what we have. we need to appreciate our family, our friends, our passions because there are people who don’t have that privilege and soon, we might not either. in a world where life might not be worth living maybe the best protest we can voice is to make our lives mean somehting. to treat each other as individuals, as humans, as brothers and sisters, in the way that governments and nations can’t. to make beauty and passion, to build things, to hold things together. i don’t know what else i can do.