Please read this Bill Moyers' interview with the writer Maxine Hong Kingston:
In 1993 Maxine Hong Kingston put out a call to veterans to join her in workshops devoted to turning their experiences into poems, novels, and essays. Here in the hills of Northern California, over 500 veterans...from every war since WORLD WAR II have taken part, and some of their finest work has now been published in this book, VETERANS OF WAR; VETERANS OF PEACE. For many of them it has been a life-changing even life-saving experience
Last week Cindy Sheehan announced she was leaving the Democratic Party because they have capitulated on Iraq. Today she has announced that she will no longer work within or be a representative face of the Peace Movement. I empathize with her choices. It called to mind the Moyers' interview with Maxine Hong Kingston:
BILL MOYERS: Do you ever give up thinking you could make a difference?
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Oh, yeah.
BILL MOYERS: You do?
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Yeah. I give up. And I feel despair. And, "What's the use. But whenever I am unhappy, and I am in despair, and everything hurts, I always go to the writing. And– and I– I just start setting down those words. And I follow the path that those words take me. And they will– and they will always take me somewhere, where– by the time that I finish a poem, or finish a story, then I am a different person.
From the time she was a young child Maxine Hong Kingston took it as a personal responsibility to end war.
BILL MOYERS: You know you begin your book by saying all my life I have wanted to keep soldiers safe from war. How come?
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: This was just a childhood impulse. I was born into World War Two and all those years of my babyhood and childhood I saw my cousins in uniform come and go. They would stop at my parents' home on their way to camp or on their way to Europe or they were on their way to the Pacific. And they would stop at our house to say goodbye to us and they'd be on their way and I knew what was going on, that they were going to war, this terrible thing and I just - I wished– a safety for them. I also wish that they would not go and kill anybody. And as a child, I mean, all I could do is wish on this– stars and on my birthday cake to end the war. How am I going to do this? I took it as a personal responsibility that I had to end war. And– but all I knew how to do was make wishes.
BILL MOYERS: That must've been frustrating.
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: Yes, until I figured out that the way to make a wish is that you use words. And, so right there was my, I guess, my first idea that it's words - they're going to keep us safe.
BILL MOYERS: Maxine Hong-Kingston, for veterans of war and veterans of peace, thank you very much.
Cindy Sheehan: Meaningless Sacrifice of Iraq War: Despair
After years of confronting this administration with the question "Why did Casey die?" today Cindy Sheehan has found an answer. He did not die to keep America free. He died for nothing. He was killed in an insane illegal war by his own misguided country.
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful
Cindy Sheehan: The Troops Have Been Abandoned by the American Leaders: Endless War
Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.
The New York Times sees it this way in an editorial called War Without End:
As disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach makes far more sense than Mr. Bush’s denial of Iraq’s civil war and his war-without-end against terror.
Cindy Sheehan:
This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it.
Russ Feingold:
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) responded today to congressional war critics who dropped the Iraq timeline because they feared that "White House attacks" would be "politically threatening": "Tell that to the families who lose their loved ones in the next few months while we’re dillying and dallying."
You know what’s going to happen in September? They’ll bring General Petraeus back and he’ll say, Just give me until the end of year. I think things are turning around. And then we’ll be out of session, come back in late January, February, and the fact is a thousand more troops will lose their lives in a situation that doesn’t make any sense and it is hurting our military, hurting our country. This should not wait till September.
Feingold on the Democratic Cave In:
FEINGOLD: This is George Bush’s war. I’m taking aim at those in Congress who have caved in to the idea that somehow George Bush should be able to continue the war indefinitely without any plan to end it. So I believe there were many other options, including coming back once again with a proposal for a timeline or, even better, a timeline enforced by using the power of the purse to end this war.
This is no time to back off
Cindy Sheehan: Why I Am Leaving the Democratic Party
To the Democratic Congress:
There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people of Iraq to more death and carnage. You think giving him more money is politically expedient, but it is a moral abomination and every second the occupation of Iraq endures, you all have more blood on your hands.
...Congratulations Congress, you have bought yourself a few more months of an illegal and immoral bloodbath. And you know you mean to continue it indefinitely so "other presidents" can solve the horrid problem BushCo forced our world into.
It used to be George Bush's war. You could have ended it honorably. Now it is yours and you all will descend into calumnious history with BushCo.
I agree with Cindy Sheehan in every point save one. I am not, and would not consider leaving the Democratic Party. She's right. The Democrats now own this thing... it is our responsibility to end it, and the cost in American and Iraqi lives by delay is ours.
As Feingold said, this is no time to back off... unless backing off means getting some distance, and listening to other voices.
"when we listen, we breathe in one another's words and so this poem is about breathing each other and also communicating with one another." Maxine Hong Kingston
Poem for Têt. Lang Cô village, Viêt Nam
Lunar New Year, 31/1/1995
This is the poem
that will save my life
this the line that will cure me
this word, this, the word word the one
this breath the one I am.
TED SEXAUER
Vietnam Veteran