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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left behind a trail of dead children, a thousand pictures of tortured naked men, and enough tears to fill an ocean. Not
your tears, perhaps, but real
human tears* nevertheless... issued forth from grieving parents,
limbless children, family members and friends. Whatever the outcome, what we do now will not erase the crimes we committed against our fellow human beings.
It may be true,
that in a society that has lost its moral compass, Bush and his followers will escape legal
justice... but that will not erase what the moving finger has written, or what the awakened soul will remember for a long time.
This is not about whether or not one day Iraq will be a Democracy. The negligence, the treason, the lies and the carnage are not forgotten. We visit the pyramids and admire the work of kings and give not one thought to the
slaves, those tortured
souls, who built them. Somewhere the injustice is recorded, just as America's early history is recorded.
We had our slaves too, and who can deny that America owes much
of what we became to the once widely held view that 'the only good Indian is a dead
Indian.' But who remembers
the dead when we walk into a Wal-Mart, a Starbucks, or the
front door of our own home, all of which are built atop their
bones? I do.
You cannot turn back the clock and you cannot bring back those who were betrayed and sacrificed for nothing more than wanting to live in peace. Time heals wounds and forgiveness forgives, but it doesn't make wrongs right; it doesn't make injustice, justice.
Because of what we've done in Iraq and many other
places as well—too many to mention here—we are a nation of people that has blood on our hands. Bush, and those who think for him, lead him, follow him, came before him... should be impeached, prosecuted, and brought to justice for crimes committed. And the rest of
us—not innocent—should dedicate ourselves to making this planet a more decent place to live, as we seek to take full responsibility for what we've done and try to find an honorable path to forgiveness. All it takes is courage... the courage to tell the truth mostly.... to look the naked truth in the eye with humility in our
hearts and act accordingly with honor and basic decency. At least that's where we should begin and that's what we should be doing now.
Forgiveness comes only after taking responsibility... only after striving
honorably to acknowledge the truth, only after striving to make things
right, and only after striving not to repeat the sorry errors
of the past.
I offer you a place to start:
http://www.gpln.com/udhr.html
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*
This girl, now an orphan, was in the back seat of a car with
her 4 brothers and sisters. When her father, who was
driving didn't hear or understand the instruction to stop,
soldiers opened fire spraying his and his wife's blood into
the back seat onto the children, adding one more twist to the nightmare
they were already living.
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