Against Cold Rock

"And yet there is a surreal silence, save for the noise of 'news' in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapses and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is 'an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension.' In other words, bloodshed and chaos equals control." - John Pilger, "Iran may be the Greatest Crisis of Modern Times", ISR, May-June, 2007.

Bloodshed and chaos equals control: the war strategy in a nutshell. The formula of the corporate news media reinforces this line perfectly: the more chaos, the more violence, the more fear, the more Americans will support war as the only possible solution. The U.S. has deliberately inflamed warfare between Sunni and Shiite in Iraq in order to ensure the conditions for permanent control.

The best commentary I've read so far on Cindy Sheehan's resignation is from Sunsara Taylor: "And, yes, it can seem at times like we are hurling our soft bodies and our embattled dreams up against cold rock, and like the forces aligned against us are made of impenetrable marble. But marble has fissures and fault lines and cracks deep beneath the surface and these can be located and the marble itself can be pried apart by the determined action of millions who dare. So I am struck again with the truth and the enormity of our choices captured in the final words of the World Can't Wait Call: "History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US." - Sunsara Taylor, "This is Not a Story About Cindy Sheehan", CounterPunch, June 3, 2007.

This rock, I fear, is the imponderable weight of our sins, both personal and social. Therefore, it is only our action, our determined heartfelt action, that can pry open the cracks in the subterranean rock that weighs the heavier the more we refuse to grow in spirit.