Sunday, February 04, 2007

Editorial: Tossing "BE HONEST" right back at ya

kvh

Cursed are the peace resisters, for they shall destroy the earth.

A lot of hot air flies around. For instance, do the pundits who ignore Iraq but do shout out to the environment every fourth or fifth column think what goes in Iraq doesn't effect the environment? Do they think using depleted uranium is almost as good as planting a tree? Do they think the explosions don't impact global warming?

Or how about the much dismissed concern over Iraq's oil industry? The jaw boners want to tell you that it can be fixed, somewhere down the line, if the industry is privatized. Hmm. Foreign corporations stand to make as much 70% profit if privatization goes through. Foreign companies who are basically ready to steal the money from the Iraqi people are supposed to be trusted with the environment? Did Exxon ever pay up for the Exxon-Valdez oil spill? (No.)

What happens in Iraq does effect the environment directly. And we toss that out there because our Chatty Cathys and Charlies of the left have so damn little to say about Iraq.

Exactly when they do they get serious. Excuse us, let us rephrase that -- BE HONEST: When do you get serious?

Ehren Watada faces a court-martial tomorrow. Now, it's not, for instance, Egyptian bloggers, and it might not lend itself well to yet another artistic rendering of stereotyping the south; however, it is pretty damn important. BE HONEST: Do you give a damn?

Abeer Qasim Hamza was gang-raped and murdered by US soldiers in her home. BE HONEST: Do you give a damn about Abeer?

When the helicopter crashes started piling up (before the 12 dead in the one crash), did you call out the nonsense excuses and demand some honesty about the fact that helicopters were being shot down? BE HONEST: You didn't write one damn word. A crash here, a crash there, here a crash, there a crash, and you didn't have one damn word to say about it.

December 31st, the number of US troops who have died in the illegal war reached 3,000. You don't have to answer whether or not you noted it -- we know you didn't. A few days after the fact, The Nation did online, in a single sentence that they spun into gays and military. (Apparently the author of that piece hadn't found anything to attack in the latest issue of Harper's magazine.) But are you aware that the AFP count for the month of January was 90 US troops killed? BE HONEST.

When you ignore war resisters, when you refuse to cover them, do you have any idea how that hurts your colleagues who work with you? Do you know their histories? BE HONEST.

If you did, you'd hang your head in shame. In fact, BE HONEST, at this late date, with so little you've done to cover Iraq, how do you live with yourself? BE HONEST.


Cursed are the peace resisters, for they shall destroy the earth.

[Illustration is "Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts 'Peace Resister'."]