Dissident Veteran For Peace: To Fran Richey

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Thursday, May 22, 2008

To Fran Richey

As long as "anti-war" mothers care more about their sons than they care about the daughters, sons, parents, and siblings whom their sons kill or help kill, the killing will continue.

As long as self-described liberals refuse to argue with "our soldiers" when they allow themselves to be the instruments of the deadly policies those same liberals claim to oppose, the killing will continue.

As long as Americans indulge themselves and their children in the beliefs that those people over there in the "horrible underbelly of the world" are different and unlike "us" and that "we" have no part in "all this hatred and all this sort of evil around the world," the killing will continue.