Protest against the war Saturday (January l8) noon at City Hall. Rating: NNNNN
I remember after the fall of the two towers, when Bush 2 finally emerged from his bunker, he called the suicide bombers “cowardly."e Bill Maher on his network show, Politically Incorrect, disagreed. He said, to paraphrase, “No, they’re not the cowards. The cowards are the ones who lob cruise missiles in and kill from afar.” For this Bill lost his job. But as we approach the brink of bloody war with Iraq, the truth of Maher’s insight becomes more evident.
As the U.S. prepares massive death from the skies in a one-size-fits-all massacre, murdering the many to get the one, the reek of cowardice begins to be palpable. How far will we go in our play-acting that there is any justice or logic to this impending war?
Will we be able to weep over solitary photos of the few lost airmen when a hundred towers full of children are burning? I remember in the previous Bush war how the networks loved to ride those cameras in the tips of cruise missiles, jabbering like excited sports announcers as the distant target grew larger and larger before impact and lights-out. This all stopped, though, when one of their special burrowing missiles managed to find its way into a daycare centre and incinerate numerous children.
Of course, there have been such advances in technology since then. How many times the number of Kurds gassed by Saddam will “we” kill in search of him? Distance doesn’t dissipate moral cravenness. No matter how high the bombers fly above their victims, those who push the buttons are as cowardly as concentration camp guards.
When the smuggled-out images of the dead — the many dead — begin to emerge, will it be enough for those of us who thought it was wrong and did nothing to weep and recriminate and say we were misled? Those cooked-up reasons for war that seem all too transparent now will be even more see-through after the fact.
And when we look through them, we might begin to see who the biggest cowards are. Those who knew better and did nothing. The enablers. The silent.
For everyone else there will be a demonstration on Saturday.
