Circle of Violence

We have been led into a vicious circle of bloodshed and violence in Iraq and in Afghanistan. It may be that, as in the case of Afghanistan, the conflict was unavoidable (I don't think so), and it may well be the case that most of our troops have tried to carry out our invasions and occupations with care and professionalism, but there have been countless tragedies, often committed by our soldiers, in defense, or through search and destroy aggressions, or by indiscriminate cluster-bombings.

Other violence and bloodshed has occurred at the hands of insurgents there, possibly remnants of the former Iraqi Guard, or outside antagonists, or, I believe, mostly from Iraqi citizens who have been driven to violent expressions of freedom and liberty, which we disregard as threats to the consolidation of our false authority.

We bear responsibility for our actions there, and we bear a special responsibility because of the false justifications for the invasion and occupation, and the lack of support for our false, imposed authority there. We are creating the environment that has fostered these abuses, on both sides. We bear ultimate responsibility for Iraq as long as we insist on dictating the course of Iraq with our aggression.

Mahatma Gandhi once said:

"Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds."

"Peace," Herman Wouk wrote, "if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act but the coming of a state of mind."

All else that we pursue should be a means to that peace; and a wholesale rejection of violent postures which just invite more violence. This war must end. We must apologize and leave before the killings today become tomorrow's revenge.


Me Book

Keep trying, bigtree.
:a sad exhausted smile of hope:

as he strode across the plain. The old warriors would say, “The hunter pursues, and all in his path fall away. But the path is a circle. And the resting hunter must fall away or keep hunting.” He was now certain that he was being trailed, close behind. The crest ahead marked the edge of his valley. He laughed to himself, biting back his hunter’s pride and allowing no impediment to his hasty descent into the mother wood, his lair.

A tawny mane with eyes of taupe and gold nuzzled aside a branch of new buckthorn leaves and watched silently as Wa’lik made his way deep into the valley crevasse. The visiting marauder, a full-grown male cougar, had risked too much in this daylight stalking, and he would stop for now. By nightfall the cover of dark would hide all but the scent of his prey. The big cat eased his slender frame to the ground and dropped his head down, lifting it up once more to scout behind.

Nothing seemed familiar to him. The vegetation had changed and none of the odors of the previous summer remained. Yet there was something irresistible in the sight of this lone man. There was something from the past, the smell of a hunt. This cougar felt no sense of danger in his memory of the scent of this man; there was no fear in his hungry mind. It was not a bravery born from any natural order. Man continued to exercise eminence over all in the forest, outside of the incidental and inevitable force of nature. Yet, a man’s careless attempt to dominate this beast the season before had ended with an errant arrow and a torn pride leveraged by a narrow escape, leaving both anxious to affirm their rightful place in the forest hierarchy of the hunters and the hunted.

The naive marauder dropped his large head again onto the stony ledge, pulled in his great tail and forced himself to sleep. He would not awaken again until the dusky veil of night gave way to the pale light of the moon.


This is an excerpt from my childrens book, Walik and the Last Deer

it has to stop