“I don’t walk about belief – whether or not we should have started this war. Rather, I walk because we shouldn’t live our lives as if all is normal. People are suffering every moment because of this war – U.S. Soldiers and their families, Iraqi soldiers and civilians and their families – and this question of what we can do to end this suffering should be with us every day.”
a Concord (MA) area resident – in a letter to the editor regarding her own participation in a public vigil each Friday morning at the town center – ‘We Walk for All Who Suffer Because of War.’
this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
we honor courage in all its forms
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
An Iraqi woman cries after identifying the body of her relative in a hospital, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, March 1, 2006. Three bombs exploded Wednesday within an hour in Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring at least 48, police said, elsewhere, four people died when mortar rounds slammed into their homes in the capital and a nearby town.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
History
by Robert Lowell
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had–
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends–
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose–
O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
