something to do to help stop this war

Cameron Penny, a 12 year old poet from Michigan, wrote this and then read it at a meet-up of Poets Against the War in New York City.

If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a battlefield between two armies
And when the soldiers look into the window
They don’t see their enemies
They see themselves as children
And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep
When they wake up, the land is well again.

What a beautiful dream that is. As another means of stopping the fighting, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, writing for The Nation, suggest a monthly Iraq Moratorium Day, an adjunct to the periodic anti-war gatherings in this country where so many are opposed to what's happening in Iraq.

I remember the Vietnam War moratorium days when I was a baby activist. This is something we can all do, every 3d Thursday beginning September 21. Call congress, email the Whitehouse, rabblerouse, speak up, practice patriotism. Doing something is far better than doing nothing, and it just might help.

boo hoo hoo, john boehner

John Boehner's tearful plea to congress to pass the Iraq supplemental funding bill indicates he remains grossly uninformed about 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. As his own emperor admitted:

In August, 2006, when President Bush was explaining how the 9/11 attacks inspired his "freedom agenda," Cox News reporter Ken Herman of Cox News, interrupted to ask what Iraq had to do with 9/11. And the president set things straight once and for all.

"The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East," said Bush.

"What did Iraq have to do with it?" asked Herman.

"What did Iraq have to do with what?" responded a confused Bush.

"The attack on the World Trade Center," explained Herman.

"Nothing," admitted Bush, who went on to say that "nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack."

For emphasis, Bush repeated, "Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq."

In response to Boehner's absurd and tearful plea, "when are we going to stand up and take them on? When are we going to defeat 'em? Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, if we don't do it now, and if we don't have the courage to defeat this enemy, we will long, long regret it." Boo hoo hoo, Mr. Boehner, you idiot.

Listening to this jackass, I can only ask of the people of this country who care about democracy, who care about our soldiers dying every day in a pointless, fruitless, devastating war, when are we going to have the courage to defeat this enemy, this shameless, conscienceless band of idiots occupying Congress and the White House.

avaaz.org ~ we're all that's left

this fucking war

I can't bear it. I can't imagine how the families of our armed forces feel. A year? And we still can't save lives with a mine resistant vehicle, or even get one cheap piece of equipment that might save a soldier's life?

okay

From DailyKos . . .

Buck up. We still haven't completely lost this Iraq supplemental battle. And if we do, instead of crying and taking your ball home, resolve to fight even harder. We owe it to our troops in Iraq, to our families, to our neighbors, to ourselves.

We have a lot of deadwood to get rid of in DC -- both Democratic and Republican. We have to combat the lies of the right wing noise machine and its allies in the traditional media. We have to build an electoral machine that can go toe-to-toe against the GOP's machine and win -- even when Republicans aren't shooting themselves in the foot.

This movement is about fighting for what we believe in, doing the hard work to transform both our party and our nation. It won't happen at once. We'll have to do this incrementally one issue fight and one election cycle at a time.

Deep breath, shoulder shake, whap on the head. Okay. Onward.

support our troops

David Michael Green's excellent analysis of patriotism and this administration's bogus support of the troops at Common Dreams.

". . . Of course, that could never happen here. Not now. Surely our young (and, in this war, not so young) soldiers are never called upon to fight in the interests of elites, interests so nefarious that they would have to be hidden under stacks of lies concerning national security threats, and behind a barrage of patriotic platitudes. Surely America’s bravest are never treated as expendable cannon fodder by leaders who could care less about their welfare. Surely they’re not trotted off the war like so many Iranian children, clutching a plastic key to heaven in one hand, and a fairytale of how much they’re truly valued in the other. . . .

"Major General Smedley Butler (who knew firsthand whereof he spoke, having served, by his own assessment, as a high-ranked military lackey doing the dirty work for corporate robber-barons in Latin America) nailed it when he said, '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. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.'"

Bringing them home is the best support we can give the troops. It is the greatest act of patriotism to get them out of this disaster.