whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

War is an abstraction in the American imagination. It lives there, cloaked in glory, as an emblem of patriotism. We show our love for our country by sending our troops abroad and then "supporting" them, no matter what. When images appear that contradict the high-flown rhetoric of war -- whether of young GIs disgracefully humiliating Iraqi prisoners or of a devastated holy city where vast fields of American-created rubble surround a shrine -- we simply do not take them in as real. Thinking of ourselves as only motivated by good intentions, we cannot fathom the possibility that we have demonized an innocent people, that what we are doing is murder on a vast scale.

-- James Carroll, The Unwinnable War. Boston Globe; 7 Sept 2004.

Thanks to lawrenceofcyberia

posted by: Whitebeard at 20:04 | link | comments |