"War" is insane. Modern "war" consists of unilateral slaughter portrayed in humanitarian spin that acts as rationale. It's not "war" at all. The "Defense" department doesn't do any defending, but is dedicated to grabbing oil and strategically surrounding China & Russia for the Empire.

" Bhuiyan has written on his website: “Our work doesn’t end here. We need to educate people about the healing power of forgiveness.”"

Very commendable and it renews my hope that not all of mankind has sunk to some new irreversble low. Reminds me of how the Amish community responded to the school house shootings. They didn't build a shrine on the spot, they didn't go after the family of the shooter asking for revenge. They don't mark it's anniversary every year with tears and lamenting.

http://www.800padutch.com/amishforgiveness.shtml

"... the addictive logic that fools us into thinking that the violence we perpetrate is the good kind, because it takes out evil."

Or, as Pogo might have observed, we have become the evil we seek to destroy.

War is insane and further and deeper it is trained into the male psyche as the way to be a man and too many men especially the old ones who don't have to actually fight love it. And now with drones it can be done without injury to the drone pilots; the logical consequence of patriarchy wedded to techno-capitalism. And women are increasingly supporting war being sold the bill of goods that it makes them more secure when the opposite is true.

We have never been less secure and the more war the more this is so. The planet is endangered mainly because of the war machine which consumes more fossil fuels than many countries and pollutes everything it touches with depleted uranium, Agent orange and the ongoing disaster of nuclear power which is about making bombs.

"CIA has never looked more like its direct ancestor, the OSS, than it does right now," said former CIA Director Michael Hayden. "It is as intensely operational as it's ever been." This from another CD article about the acceptance of drones and how the Obama administration has helped that to happen. You can hear the excreble Hayden crowing over being so involved in war and all the neo-cons and Tom Friedman in the background cheering him on.

I wish American women would stand up and say no to these men destroying the world. Women in other countries with far less resources have said no to war. If women did this collectively it would make a difference. Of course women are reacting to the backlash against feminism and more divided and male identified than ever. In fact i believe much of the warring has to do with men threatened by feminism as well as their stupid logic of war that Koehler outlines.

I also believe that patriarchy is in its death throes the only question is will it kill all life on earth before it dies. This is what it produces death and destruction. A very sterile power.

But, Mr. Koehler, please let us not confuse wanting peace and forgoing justice, right?

I mean, it's fine and dandy and all to be a forgiving person but to go the next step and exonerate and let off the hook criminals who perpetrated crimes that not only led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people but inflicted a deep psychic scar on our society as a whole is too much.

Look, people in the US still to this day won't even trust their own senses - both common and physcial - and bring themselves to acknowledge what any elementary school child could tell you:

The official story about what happened on that day is a fairy tale that defies both the laws of physics and common sense.

And that is just on the physical aspects of that day alone.

Once a person delves deeper into the inconsistent actions of various government officials and agencies the allure of said fairly tale is shattered.

Take for example the FBI report releasesed last year concerning the 5 Mossad agents arrested on the day of 9/11 of celebrating the desctruction of the WTC.

The majority of this report is redacted but we still learn that in all of the developed photos this crew took of themselves they are all congratulatory and happy.

That these people knew far much more than we were ever told about them.

And the rest of the report won't be declassified until 2030.

Here's a link to the report below:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/62392807/1138796-001-303A-NK-105536-Section-1-944861

We as a society are not being allowed closure concerning a wound we ALL experienced.

Our "betters" are telling us that we "just can't handle the truth".

So much so that - like the JFK assassination - we can't see the evidence of criminality ourselves and make our own judgements as is proscribed in the phrase "jury of one's peers".

Now, back to what you're proposing about peace.

Don't let calls for peace stand in for exoneration.

Once one goes down this path one walks an extremely close line to the "look forward, not back" mentality that our psychopathic overlords have used to clear themselves of the murder and theft that has so characterized the last few decades.

Peace is good but peace without justice is candy-coated criminality.

"there was nothing to be done about it"

Actually, there was, and is.

Alleged progressives like the author could have pointed out that 911 was a fraud.

It wasn't 'human evolution' that ended in Sept of 2001......it was Truth and Justice.

I watched part of "Frontline" last night which was about the spiritual crisis that the 9-11 attack caused so many people: "Where was God? How could God let this happen?"

Well, it's not the first time . . . hardly. History is almost nothing but a succession of massacres, one people trying to eradicate another people. This notion that the U.S. was singled out for some special kind of attack, unprecedented and utterly uncalled for, is to me nonsense. It puts us (along with holocaust jews) in a "special victim" category -- or so we feel. Thinking this way sentimentalizes the nation's desire to retaliate and inculcates a kind of "holy self pity" in the public mind.

9/11, whether it was a faked-up job or not, is just another instance of killing justified by a belief in a God. It almost always is. Ancient warlords declared themselves gods so make their leadership seem sacred to the dupes and troops.

Only when (more likely, if) people learn that destructive warmaking is just that, not sanctified by a supreme being, and stop doing it will it stop.

Keep chipping away, Chomsky and Zinn told us. But when you actually do it, it turns out, nobody really gives a shit. The hippie-dippies did a much better job in the time of Vietnam. There were great songs and even bumper stickers. Give them credit, straight people, once and for all, for ending Vietnam. Without them, we'd still be there.

I can't complain about reaction to my posts here or at Organizing for America or at The Daily Beast. I got it. But when I put them in a book and edited and added-- well, I've made $20 so far.

One person here suggested that I was a complete creep for charging money at all for anti-war expression. Maybe!? But how else are you supposed to pay for all the time you lose writing some book?

Should we protesters only use the internet? Shouldn't take our protests to the next level? I'd like to see a thousand books against the Afghan war.

THE LAST WORDS OF RICHARD HOLBROOKE, at Kindle and Nook.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Frederick Douglass ...

When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".

Love your country, but never trust its government.

-- Robert A. Heinlein.

"The state calls its own violence `law', but that of the individual `crime'"

-- Max Stirner

"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!' in a crowded theater."

-- Peter Venetoklis

...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents."

-- Don B. Kates, writing on statistical patterns in gun crime

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

-- John F. Kennedy

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

-- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

-- George Washington, in a speech of January 7, 1790

Liberals, arm yourselves!

Direct democracy

As to last night's "Frontline" on 9/11: "Where was God? How could God let this happen?"
Why does God let animals kill each other? If He exists, that is the way He planned it. Humans act like animals because they are, and animals only understand power.

Liberals and progressives give up power by trying to be civilized, kind, loving and peaceful while conservatives gain power by taking advantage of everyone else and being evil bastards. Why must libs let them do this?

Love and Peace works among liberal humanists, but the conservative beast only understands power as all animals do. Libs must deal with cons from a position of power.

Liberals arm yourselves!

Direct democracy

First, we must forgive ourselves...

“Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cried out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

...It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at least start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!” - 1942 Pamphlet #2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
http://www.whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html

"Radical religious ideologies, new technologies and cheap, powerful weapons have catapulted the world into (what a Pentagon report called) 'a period of persistent conflict..... No one should harbor the illusion that the developed world can win this conflict in the near future.'" - Robert Koehler quoting recent Washington Post article he aptly finds "glaringly lacking in moral intelligence" in its analysis of 9/11

Radical religious ideologies have been a part of human culture since recorded history began.

New technologies, too, are a constant - from rocks and spears to bows and arrows, swords and armor, gunpowder, tanks, jet planes, nukes, and drones.

Cheap, powerful weapons have always been around for those inclined to seek them out and use them.

Note carefully how human decisions, human actions by (invariably male) human beings have caused absolutely none of this. Causality is attributed to disembodied forces external to us mortal humans, even those holding positions of power. It is those radical thoughts, the inexorable creep of technological advance, and an abundance of cheap, powerful killing weaponry that has somehow catapulted the world into the 21st Century period of persistent conflict we now collectively find ourselves in.

So don't blame the political decision makers.

Don't blame the soldiers or the spooks.

Don't blame the merchants of death.

Above all, don't blame the elite intelligensia of the DC foreign policy establishment or the WaPo editorial board, whose societal role is to grapple daily with these invisible, mystical forces which cause wars to erupt, and spread, and morph tragically across the face of the globe for reasons that are no one's fault - forces which certainly no mortal being, however well intentioned, can be expected to contain in the near future.....

In my opinion, the first step is to stop bullshitting about cause and effect.

Bill from Saginaw

Ahhh...the sunshine and cool weather were Grand today. Tomorrow may be a good day to die, but I'm glad it wasn't today for me.

Where I was

the day was blue
the sun was warm
the beds were full of death
the silence was crisp as apples
I went from house to house
we watched it move from within our rooms
our televisions filmed our falling
and the roar of debris
and the muted breaths
of these birds with no wings
with no feathers
tumbling out of the heat
the disappearances of the kings
the flights into fields and the offices
of the legitimized murders
I walked from death to death
it was my job
but how to sooth the dying
when the angels are blackened in soot
and the fires are repeated over and over
The day was blue
the sun was warm
I walked into the offices
on the pillows of a bad dream
we did our work anyway
we planned the massacres to come
I looked after the dying
everyone stopped leaving the house
the house was full of mayhem
and more mayhem to come
Some of the dead are fortunate
what we have seen
and what we have gown accustomed to
would shake the roses of their love
and the petals would fall like bodies from burning pyres
about to collapse
and they would remember their children
and their children's children
must somehow survive
and the kings flew off over Nebraska
and we were left with nothing but replay
and the legitimizing of torture

*
Comment on Where I Was

and now the various shining faces
tell this story over and over again
we have a reason to broil the planet
we have a reason to quarry the sacred rocks
we have a reason to spoil the drinkable seas
we have a reason to give away
the great gifts of our mothers and fathers
to preserve the offices in banks
to burn the children of the Indus
to unleash the deep ambivalence
like a killer who must caress
the woman he devours
we have become that devil
Oh clanging tins of the bells of tyranny
we can not depose those breaths of cesium yet
and the phosphorous burns through the thigh
and the voters clamour for more blood

Just how did it come to pass that "peace has become...... something of a dirty word in Washington foreign-policy circles" post-9/11, as the Washington Post dutifully, succinctly reports? Accepting the accuracy of this inside the DC beltway news nugget, is the problem with the circle, or is the problem those of us who are outside the circle looking in?

"War" used to be something of a dirty word in America's common language lexicon, riding Apocalyptically alongside plague, pestilence, and famine if my memory for literary imagery is intact. "Peace" was very much a clean, respectable word in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and both World Wars I and II.

Dwight Eisenhower warned about the dangers of an unchecked military industrial complex. JFK repeatedly invoked calls for nuclear disarmament to avoid nuclear holocaust. Lyndon Johnson was a peace candidate, with Barry Goldwater framed neatly as a reckless war monger. Tricky Dick slyly positioned himself as the antiwar candidate against poor Hubert Humphrey, then four years later billed himself as the responsible Vietnam peace-with-honor candidate against the defeatist lefty, George McGovern.

Jimmy Carter never rattled sabres, preaching the virtues of world peace through international law. George H W Bush never could quite figure out how a draft dodger like Bill Clinton could possibly have been preferred by the voters over a proven soldier/spy, manly military man like himself, who had finally exorcised the ghosts of Vietnam. Remember how great it was in the late 90's, when Al Gore framed a whole campaign around how best to divvy up the nation's peace dividend when the Cold War at last had ended and the beating of swords into plowshares could commence?

Peace has never been a dirty word for me, my neighbors, or friends.

If the foreign policy circle in Washington DC speaks and thinks in different terms, then it's time to end the circle jerk.

Bill from Saginaw

Koehler has transcended most of his earlier writing with this article. Certainly it blows most 9/11 'commemorations' out of the water. The comments are also generally excellent.

As for Hiroshima and its aftermath (which I believe includes Fukushima), the U.S. will never apologize nor admit to the folly that Oppenheimer realized upon the (plutonium) Trinity test at Alamogordo. I was under three years old when uranium Little Boy was dropped and flattened Hiroshima, "a military target," as Truman claimed, then three days later plutonium implosion device Fat Boy was dropped on Nagasaki. For some reason I knew of these bombs at a very early age.

Historians and media pundits have "debated" for years on such issues as Did These Bombings Shorten the War?, and How many American Lives Would Have Been Lost If Not for the Bomb? Etc. Bullshit. This is the "Logic of Violence," an inverted rationalization that refuses to acknowledge U.S. culpability in ushering in the Nuclear Age, which has polluted the entire planet and is actually reversing Evolution (Life has always lived with "radiation," but there is a tipping point...).

Historically, to me, Fukushima feels like the Karmic Revenge of all the gods of Japan. We intentionally dropped barely-tested nuclear weapons on them, and now they are "accidentally" contaminating the entire Pacific Ocean including our shores, using reactors designed by General Electric, once a U.S. company but now long global.

Despite my existential resistance to Oppression, I know that I have spent most of my life in angry FEAR! And that was never the intent of The Enlightenment.

Nuclear "power" is essentially Entropic. Innately, except in extremely controlled conditions, it causes DNA/RNA destruction and does nothing to advance Humanity.

-30-