The Tank Man video has to be one of the most inspirational bits of tape ever recorded. I know you’ve all see it before, but it is pretty amazing so I thought it would be worth seeing again.
What, if anything, inspires you about this video and would you like to share any other video you have with us which really inspires you?
Posted in Videos, Violence, War | No Comments »We find ourselves stuck in a hopeless paradigm, where it feels necessary to empathise with the sensibilities of the aggressor so as not to sound “unpatriotic”, while remaining blind to the untold anguish of the victims. Some actually feel the need to go so far as to blame the Iraqis for their own misfortune
From Ramzy (Warning: Graphic photos of Iraq War Violence)
I never noticed this analogy before. But Ramzy, in describing something about America, has also managed to describe something about abusive family systems, where the perpetrator is protected and sympathized with, and we try to ignore the state of the victim (for terror, I suppose, of having to acknowledge our own victimization).
Posted in Quote for the Day, Violence, War | 9 Comments »From Huffington Post
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All today I have been thinking about the Iraq conflict and considering the Christian response. I would like to share something I’ve found. It is from a Commencement Address from a fundamentalist High School. Imagine the scene: two bearded guys on a stage, giving the kids a final lecture before they are let loose on the world. An awkward silence as a significant proportion of the school just wants the whole thing to be over. If it had been my school, there would probably have been stink bombs and lots of sniggering, but then maybe the fundamentalists are better behaved than we were.
Mr Souder, the history teacher is speaking.
Your theology (belief who God is) will not let you lose your life to reconcile your enemy to God, but will let you risk your life in the noble pursuit of your enemy’s blood. This is tragic, of course, and like they say, war is hell, and you will genuinely regret needing to start one, but remember your values. Stay in touch with reality. Your standard of living, that is, your ability to consume as many resources as you want to before you die, is something to which you have a sacred duty. This will again be a time for deep soul commitment. You will need to live by sight and not by old-fashioned Sunday-go-to-meeting Nice Guy ethics. Keep your eyes on the facts. Death, and your enemy’s intention to visit it on you, must be kept uppermost in your mind. After you have recovered your money-and-sword-based distance from the one who is trying to save his life at your expense, you will again have leisure to forgive others, to love all men, and maybe even, perhaps in a voluntary service situation, to suffer a little bit, in carefully measured amounts of course, for people “less fortunate” than yourself. Of course you are under no obligation to help others at all if that in any way interferes with your primary objective - postponing your death.
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I don’t agree with how he said it but I have to agree with Barack’s pastor
If we don’t get out of Iraq- we deserve the condemnations he uttered
We don’t like hearing people damn us.
We think we’re above that
We never go too far
It’s places like Iraq , Iran and North Korea that deserve to be damned – not us
I write this from India
I’m here to protest the caste system- to support those who are working to end it
Many people think it is impossible to turn around a 3000 year old system of repression
Many think we should just be thankful for the advances in the Indian economy and wait for the trickle down to kick in for the lower castes
Many people also told the slaves that they were better off on the plantation
Another 100 years in Iraq and we will be damned, doomed and destroyed
It’s time to get out now
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(Editor’s note: Today we are participating in a blogswarm against the Iraq War. See other participants here)
So I wanted to draw your attention to Lily Hamourtziadou’s weekly feature over at Iraq Body Count called “This week in Iraq” She recently wrote in answer to the question:
“When you close your eyes and think of Iraq, what do you see in your mind’s eye?”
Images in Iraq: This is What I see (some excerpts)
Image 1: the coffins. They are carried daily, those cheap-looking boxes with the Arabic writing adorning their sides, incomprehensible to me and to most westerners like me, on the shoulders of men, young and old, pain and anger visible on their faces.
Image 2: the bodies. Bullet-riddled, decomposed, unidentified, dumped or buried in mass graves… the bodies of Iraqi citizens feature in daily reports, now lifeless, as though they had always been inanimate. …
Image 3: the women. Invariably dressed in black robes, almost as devoid of identity as the bodies found every day. Since the invasion of their country Iraqi women no longer dare to venture outside without their black cover. …
Image 4: the young assassins. The new generation of Iraq, those that should have been enjoying the joys of youth, the challenges and dreams of the future. The hope of every society. Teenage boys and girls who are learning how to make bombs, how to kill themselves and others …
Image 5: grief. The screaming mother outside the morgue, the sobbing child next to a pool of blood, the father carrying his child’s body, …
This week 384 civilians were killed or found dead. At least 8 of them were children. More coffins, more mass graves, more loss.
What about you? When you close your eyes and think of Iraq, what do you see in your mind’s eye?
Posted in War | No Comments »We’re going to focus a little on the Iraq War this week, as Wednesday is the 5 year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Over the weekend, Iraq Veterans against the War gathered in Washington D.C. in a reprise of an event that happened back in 1971 called Winter Soldier. In both event, veterans publicized and protested war crimes and atrocities by the U.S. military. Here’s a news report on the recent event. Here’s a little of the testimony.
You can find lots of other coverage via this google blog search
Or via this youtube search
Posted in War, War Crimes | 4 Comments »
So for all our fellow bloggers out there, I want to encourage you to participate in 10 days in the March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm. It has been nearly 5 years and 1 million deaths since the unprovoked U.S. invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq. (Also don’t forget to tune in to live coverage of the Washington D.C. Winter Soldier Event on the web this Friday through Sunday.) The Blogswarm project says:
You are encouraged to write against the war from a variety of perspectives. The war is a huge problem, and that makes it an enormous subject for blogging. Here are some things you might want to consider if you are having difficulty making up your mind:
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Martin recently directed us to a statement from the head of the Vermont chapter of Iraq Veterans against the War, Matt Howard. Matt Howard was a corporal in the U.S. Marine corps. Here are some excerpts.
In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world’s fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.
…
As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.
We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.
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Can’t we at least be allowed to know their names?
Friday, February 8th, 2008I sense a little anger here. It’s a kind of heartbroken anger–tears threaten to come.
So back on December 15th, 2 beautiful, delightful little Iraqi children in Karbala. Died. Blown Away. By a U.S. made and U.S. deployed cluster weapon. found. in. a. play. field. They thought it was some kind of toy.
How long have we known that these weapons blow. up. little. children. for. years. after. they. are. deployed.?
At least 40 years.
I wrote about it on this blog.
And I’ve been waiting around for weeks hoping upon hope to find out their names when Iraq Body Count finally caught their database up to december 15th of last year.
But of course, it is not to be. Like some overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of innocents who have died in Iraq, their names weren’t found out by IBC. It only made it into their incidents database. No names.
I shall not even be allowed to know the names of these beautiful children who were killed by *my* nation, *my* army, *my* weapons manufactured by *my* fellow citizens in a factory on *my* native soil.
Maybe if I keep talking about this, almost everyone will keep mostly ignoring it.
Someone should build a proper memorial to all the innocent people the U.S. has killed over the last half century. Maybe that’s impossible. Something like a gigantic statue of a CBU-87, right in the middle of the mall in Washington D.C. as tall as the Washington monument. with hundreds of thousand of tiny dead child statues all over the ground underneath it. That would work. That would be perfect for my mood today. It could be a sort of national shrine. We could all make a pilgrimage to it every year, or something.
Posted in Violence, War | 6 Comments »