Little Sama ran to her mother when she heard the firecrackers exploding near their apartment yesterday, yelling "Bomb, bomb!"

"No, Sama, that is not a bomb, we are not in Iraq, her mother assured her.

Sama was 5 when they left Iraq, and yet she still remembers the sound of a bomb exploding.  It broke my heart when her young mother, a widow being treated for breast cancer, shared this with me.

Fourth of July brings a fresh hell for those who have been in a war zone, combatants and civilians alike.  My ex, a Vietnam veteran, always hated the Fourth because of the explosions and noise, and I imagine it is no better, and perhaps worse, for the veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Friday, one of the newly arrived families showed me pictures of where a car bomb had exploded near their family business in 2006, killing 100.  They told me the small objects littering the top of the car in the picture were pieces of human flesh.  One of the young sons showed me a a long scar down the back of his head from another car bomb explosion, and another son told of being thrown into a canal from yet another car bomb explosion, which severely injured his back. So now I wonder about what psychological scars these Iraqi refugees may also need to deal with in the future.  They are the lucky ones -- they were able to flee Iraq and the violence there.

I know our troops and military families are suffering from multiple deployments, stop-loss, extended deployments, and the difficulties of adjusting to life after a war zone, and there seems to be no end in sight as Congress, our friends and foes alike, continue to vote funding to continue the war.  They have no safe place to flee to, a refuge where they can leave the war behind and heal.  It is their families that must try to provide this place of safety and love for them, when they even allow us to.

How much more can we take?  How much more can the Iraqi people take? How much more can this country, our country, inflict on our own young men and women, before their humanity is lost and they are broken beyond repair? I am heartsick at the prospects of a future of never-ending war in the Middle East.

The Declaration of Independence says: ...unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Wow..mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed...  We are more disposed to suffer than to change what we are accustomed to, it would seem.  Prescient words for where we find America today.

Bombs continue to go off in Iraq.  Troops are killed and wounded, as are Iraqi civilians.  We must work together to find a way to end this madness.  It is our right, it is our duty.