The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
How many times a day do we seize on any news — any news at all — as a possible sign that our country will be saved from the Neocons? And that our values and our ethics — and our nation’s embodiment of those values and ethics in uplifting government standards and programs, from the Endangered Species Act to adequate unemployment insurance and federal housing programs — are being preserved?
So, when I see today’s headlines in the nation’s newspapers that Rita was not as destructive as Katrina, I am thrilled. And not just for the people of Texas and Louisiana. But for the lessening of the still-staggering amount of federal aid that will be required to rebuild these regions. And that’s not because I don’t want the federal government to be burdened, but because I don’t want the Republicans to have more excuses to dredge, cut off, and destroy the tributaries and rivers and creeks trickling out from the federal government to all people, just as has happened to the Mississippi River.
Peter Daou begins his essay, “The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength,” with this: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” – Matthew 16:26
Why else did all of you here march yesterday, if not for that sentiment deep in your souls?
For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.
An’ how many times can a man turn his head,
An’ pretend that he just doesn’t see?
And so, when I am lifting my finger to the wind, and searching for any hopeful sign, I smile when I see a story like this because I know that the American people are, albeit a bit late, getting it:
Bush plea for cash to rebuild Iraq raises $600
An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt. Yet since the appeal was launched earlier this month, donations to rebuild New Orleans have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars.
The public’s reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration’s attempt to offer citizens ‘a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq’ has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country. … (From The Observer (UK) reporter Mark Townsend — in Houston! — on Sept. 25, 2005, via The Daou Report
An’ how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
An’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
An’ how many dead will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
Continued BELOW:
There are other little signs every day. You see those signs, your heart beats faster, and you share what you’ve seen with us here. We all search and pray that we’re not just deluding oursselves into being hopeful. But, at the least, no matter the outcome … at least we have left, if nothing else, our quests for fairness and a decent opportunity for every American.
It is ours — not theirs — that is the noble cause. You all expressed and embodied this noble cause yesterday with your feet, your voices, your words, and your reaching out to each other and beyond.
And Army Capt. Ian Fishback embodied our noble cause when he “told his company and battalion commanders that soldiers were abusing Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention [although], he says, they told him those rules were easily skirted.” And he further embodied that noble cause when he wrote, in constructing a chronology, that “that Army guidance was ‘too vague for officers to enforce American values‘.”
This summer, after weighing the possible effects on his career, he stepped outside the Army’s chain of command and telephoned the Human Rights Watch advocacy group.
He later met with aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Friday, he authorized them to make public his allegations, along with those of two sergeants, of widespread prisoner abuse they had witnessed when they served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
Within hours, the Army announced it had opened a criminal investigation.
The review is the first major investigation by the military of widespread prisoner abuse outside the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the first time such a review has targeted soldiers in the regular Army rather than the National Guardsmen and reservists in the Abu Ghraib case.
But for Fishback, whom friends describe as a deeply religious Christian and patriot who prays before each meal and can quote from the Constitution, the ordeal may be just beginning.
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 25, 2005 (sub. free)
A true Christian, he is. With a noble cause. Matthew would be pleased.
For him and ours — for our noble cause — we’ll never give up, and we’ll keep marching, and we’ll keep seeking and yearning:
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
…………………………
Dylan lyrics, with a nice history of the song.
