the news we don't hear
Aug. 12th, 2006 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eHere is what is happening in Beirut.
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/07/23_Frisk_empire-leaves.htm
It makes me weep.
Who is at fault? We are. We push it under the carpet. We don't look. We let it happen. We think it can't happen here. But it is happening here... slowly, creeping... as we allow our politicians to become more hardened and less responsible, more insanely religious. We have to speak to each other and stop it. Only we can. There is nobody else. If we won't, then we are all doomed.
Lies upon lies are laid down as a dark matting, suffocating, and at times feeling almost impenetrable. It seems hopeless. But that is part of the real enemy. It isn't hopeless. Darkness is shed easily by shining a light. We need to know. We need to undercut the calculated lies and pass on the untold news. We can't let this continue, or it will happen again and again and again. And when it happens here, to us and our children we will only have ourselves to blame.
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2006/07/23_Frisk_empire-leaves.htm
It makes me weep.
Who is at fault? We are. We push it under the carpet. We don't look. We let it happen. We think it can't happen here. But it is happening here... slowly, creeping... as we allow our politicians to become more hardened and less responsible, more insanely religious. We have to speak to each other and stop it. Only we can. There is nobody else. If we won't, then we are all doomed.
Lies upon lies are laid down as a dark matting, suffocating, and at times feeling almost impenetrable. It seems hopeless. But that is part of the real enemy. It isn't hopeless. Darkness is shed easily by shining a light. We need to know. We need to undercut the calculated lies and pass on the untold news. We can't let this continue, or it will happen again and again and again. And when it happens here, to us and our children we will only have ourselves to blame.
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Re: the news we don't hear
Date: 2006-08-21 12:02 pm (UTC)I think there can. When one is faced with a choice between tens of thousands of deaths and millions of deaths, one makes the choice that's before them. It is not a pleasant choice, but it's a choice that people of conscience have to step up to.
Should the allies have simply abandoned their insistence on unconditional surrender? Before we can ask that, recall that Russia had just joined the allies in declaring war on Japan, and would have greatly benefitted by ensnaring the Western allies in a long and bloody invasion and occupation of Japan, and might have sown seeds of discord among the other allies and picked up some territory to boot, so the more realistic question is, could the allies have abandoned their insistence on unconditional surrender?
But even if it could have been offered, recall that after their surrender, both Germany and Japan became forces for peace in the world. Can you say that a temporarily defanged Japan would have followed the same course? Can you even say that placing Japan in a situation that was very similar to the situation that faced Germany at the end of the first World War would have had a different effect on Japan in the 1950s and 1960s than it had on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s?
I believe we'll disagree on that, but I certainly wish you peace of heart, and perhaps you're right.