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10/12/2004: Take the beam out of your own eye, first....
Interesting point of view; I wish more people would at least contemplate it:
Every year since 9/11 the names of the 3,000 odd people killed at the World Trade Center are read out, and a public display of horror and mourning takes place. I would like to know who has been reading out the names of the thousands of Afghan, Palestinian and Iraqi civilians killed by US-Israeli military madness. I haven't heard a one. And what is truly amazing is the total blindness to the fact that it is WE-the Christians and Jews-who are occupying THEIR lands, not vice versa. Although one would never know it from watching mainstream media, the truth of the matter is that fundamentalist Christian-Zionist forces are bombing and destroying their countries and killing thousands of their innocent men, women and children. Can anyone name any Muslim country occupying a Christian or Jewish country, or bombing one with F-14s and Apache Helicopters?Brian Leiter has a good take on it: Here's a pleasingly blunt essay which takes the radical position that everyone--not just Americans--have moral standing. (I think Jesus Christ held this view too, though I'm no expert.)
Each and every day the media saturate us endlessly with fear mongering, going on and on about the threat of terrorism and how any day now the terrorists are going to strike in our own neighborhood. As if the people in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq were genetically predisposed to blow themselves up. Believe me, provide the resistance fighters (what the US Empire spokespeople call terrorists) with the same arsenal of weapons-tanks, F-14 fighter bombers, Apache helicopters, cruise missiles-and I can assure you that the suicide bombing would end immediately. Ah, but you see, when the US military forces kill innocent men, women and children-with tanks, F-14 fighter bombers, Apache helicopters, and cruise missiles-this is not terrorism. Because our cause is just, moral, and divinely sanctioned-because we have decided that God has chosen us to spread freedom and democracy.
But y'know, President George "I hear voices" Bush knows, because Jebus talks to and through him, that God doesn't give a shit about people. Unless they live above the Rio Grande, and below the 49th parallel, and east of the Pacific Ocean and west of the Atlantic Ocean.
Frankly, if Dubya and his ilk are going to heaven I'm glad I'm going to hell; the company will be much better there.
Len on 10.12.04 @ 12:13 PM CST
