i haven’t looked at the images from Boston. i’ve seen them before. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and myriad other places.
i haven’t read the stories emanating out of Boston. i’ve heard them before. Roz Mohammed, whose brother was killed in a drone attack in rural Afghanistan; little Ayoub, who was blown to pieces under the lemon tree in the family garden in Gaza City, his mother holding a blood splattered lemon as she spoke of her little boy, kissing her goodbye and running outside to go to school; eight year old Fares, the “generator” of the family decapitated as he slept in the family home in Beit Hanoun. These stories are commonplace in the world where American foreign policy is at work. And i am tired of hearing them. i am tired of mourning tents and mother's tears. My heart has been carved into little pieces. In this butcher shop of a world i begin again.
The mistake is the belief that there is a difference between here and there. There is not.
People, all of us, have been paying in endless death and dismemberment. If you woke up angry and vengeful this morning, take a very careful look in the mirror. Go beyond this blemish or that, and look in those angry eyes. Delve deep and see how tarnished and hard our hearts have become. If you do not recognize that the children killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, are as very precious as your children or the children injured and killed in Boston, you are gravely mistaken, you have been blinded.
We Americans, each and every one of us, are killers. We are supporters of terrorism. Each and every time a child is killed by a drone, a tank shell, a bomb (errant or not), machine gun fire, we hold the trigger. We are the terrorists we have been searching for.
There is no "just war". There is no "legal bombing". There is only hatred and ignorance or love. Until we recognize our place as perpetrators in this terrible cycle, hate and ignorance will out.
i choose love.
These stories resonate in light of Boston. It is beyond the time to find a new course in the world.
i haven’t read the stories emanating out of Boston. i’ve heard them before. Roz Mohammed, whose brother was killed in a drone attack in rural Afghanistan; little Ayoub, who was blown to pieces under the lemon tree in the family garden in Gaza City, his mother holding a blood splattered lemon as she spoke of her little boy, kissing her goodbye and running outside to go to school; eight year old Fares, the “generator” of the family decapitated as he slept in the family home in Beit Hanoun. These stories are commonplace in the world where American foreign policy is at work. And i am tired of hearing them. i am tired of mourning tents and mother's tears. My heart has been carved into little pieces. In this butcher shop of a world i begin again.
The mistake is the belief that there is a difference between here and there. There is not.
People, all of us, have been paying in endless death and dismemberment. If you woke up angry and vengeful this morning, take a very careful look in the mirror. Go beyond this blemish or that, and look in those angry eyes. Delve deep and see how tarnished and hard our hearts have become. If you do not recognize that the children killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, are as very precious as your children or the children injured and killed in Boston, you are gravely mistaken, you have been blinded.
We Americans, each and every one of us, are killers. We are supporters of terrorism. Each and every time a child is killed by a drone, a tank shell, a bomb (errant or not), machine gun fire, we hold the trigger. We are the terrorists we have been searching for.
There is no "just war". There is no "legal bombing". There is only hatred and ignorance or love. Until we recognize our place as perpetrators in this terrible cycle, hate and ignorance will out.
i choose love.
These stories resonate in light of Boston. It is beyond the time to find a new course in the world.
