It
is heartbreaking to see our country embarking on another futile effort to bomb
our way out of a situation that calls out for diplomacy, foreign aid, UN
supervision, refugee assistance, almost anything you can think of in
place of the devastating US assaults that inevitably murder innocent
civilians. How is the evil beheading of innocent journalists any worse
than the impersonal murder of innocents on the ground by a thoroughly detached
computer nerd, sitting at his lap top someplace in Colorado, pulling on his
joystick and destroying, by drone, unseen victims as they go about their lives tens of
thousands of miles away?
We haven’t even had a body count for all
the people who died in Iraq at the point of a US weapon. Meanwhile we
repeatedly honor and memorialize our dead soldiers, sent on a wild goose chase
after “terrorists” whose destruction of the twin towers was a criminal
act that deserved arrest and trial, not perpetual war on two countries, soon to be three. Echoes of 911 are constantly flung in our face like
metaphysical war paint, to stir the loins for battle and death. At
this time, sensible people should be calling for a global moratorium on all
arms sales. We need to stop the only ones who benefit from all this—the
arms manufacturers and their co-conspirators in endless war and grasping
Empire. Those who truly yearn for peace on earth should also be calling
for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, emulating the great success enjoyed
by South Africa when it ended a potential bloodbath and years of slaughter by
inviting people from all sides of the conflict to come forth, admit their wrong
doing, apologize, and be granted amnesty to go free. As long as we
hold out for bringing murderers to justice, they will fight us to the last
bullet, knife, bomb. That goes not only for the irregulars in the knife
slashing brigades but for our own soldiers and our leaders who ordered them
into this cruel conflict as well.
