I thought Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" was a significant and sorely needed exposé on the U.S. media's failure to perform its most basic duty -- to report the truth -- in the months before the Iraq war.
But did their failures end when the first bombs were unleashed in Baghdad?
We subsist on a steady diet of infotainment news, with cursory war coverage consisting of sanitized images that betray the true human cost of the occupation to "them" as well as "us".
Estimates of the Iraqi war dead range from 64,000 to over 655,000. We do not see them on our televisions, or read about THEIR stories, THEIR sacrifices, THEIR tragedies, THEIR hopes and dashed dreams.
Today, as we hear words like honor, sacrifice, valor and heroism used to describe our fallen soldiers, let us also take a moment to consider the interconnectedness of all human life and remember the innocents mourned by the Iraqi people. Please continue...
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Somehow this madness must cease.
We must stop now.
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste,
whose homes are being destroyed,
whose culture is being subverted.
I speak as a citizen of the world,
for the world as it stands aghast
at the path we have taken.
I speak as an American
to the leaders of my own nation.
The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it because it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fallen
What if the leaves
had faces
when they fell
and then
were swept away
like leaves,
forgotten souls
too many
to be mourned?