Before, I could watch the reports of our dead in Iraq.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Then I started coupling the reports with the Iraqi civilians.

Then I saw the pictures of the children.

Then I started crying.

They started giving a brief bio on Aaron Brown tonight of a newly dead soldier. A child. I had to turn it off.

Is this what happens to Americans? Is this the logic behind "The MSM never shows the good things? Do we all try to force the bad out because it's too painful?

I hope not. It bothered me to turn it off. Thinking of the protesters in Crawford, the Gold Star families. I went through the same crap during Nam. I had more fortitude then.

We can't give up. We must remember. We must observe.

Our country is under attack.

And the enemy lives in Washington.

[dweller]

1. for you, Tom Y. Joad

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0815-20.htm


because i know you know it.


dp


note: i posted this article in Eds and elsewhere. It has yet to receive a single reply. I don't know if the statement is too complex, or painful, or unacceptable to folks here. But it is a powerful piece. Please take the time, sometime, to read it.

For some reason, the only responses have been if i have sent/linked it to an individual, personal message. Go figure.

peace.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Wow. Powerful stuff. Please read it people. Here's the first 4

paragraphs...

We gather here this afternoon, challenged by Cindy Sheehan's courage. Out of her struggle to come to terms with the ultimate loss has come a moment for all of us to commit ourselves to peace, and to the actions necessary to bring peace to the world.

There is another opportunity that arises out of Ms. Sheehan's vigil, a struggle that takes us beyond that ultimate loss. Though I am not of the church, I will borrow its language: It is the struggle to reconcile that we are spirit living in flesh.

Because we are flesh, we know best that with which we are familiar. We love most those around us. We yearn for connections to real people in real places, people we can touch and who can touch us. We love most intensely those people around us. We hold our children in our arms, and we breathe with them as one, and we love them deeply in each breath. And that is as it should be. We are flesh that touches and is touched.

But at the same time we are spirit. We know that to live our humanity to its fullest requires moving beyond the flesh.

And so we know there can be no difference between how we treat those we love and those on the other side of the world who we will never know and never touch. If our lives and the lives of the ones we love have value -- if by virtue of being human we have a claim to life and dignity in living -- then everyone must have that same claim.

<snip>

Click the link in the post above. It's worth your time.

[dweller]

3. see what i mean?

:shrug:

peace Tom Yossarian J.

dp

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. Wow.... How strange.

:shrug:

[leftchick]

5. Very Powerful indeed....

The whole piece is a must read....

<snip>

We know that the children we hold in our arms have exactly the same value as those children we will never see, held in the arms of those we will never know. If our lives in flesh are to make any sense, our spirit must move beyond the ones we touch, the ones we love.

This is our struggle, and it is hard, because when we lose a loved one, when someone we have touched and who has touched us suffers, we cannot help but feel it more deeply. Our flesh aches. That is what it is to be human.

And at the same time we have to push ourselves to think about the suffering of those we will never touch. Our spirit has to ache as deeply as our flesh. That, too, is what it is to be human.

If we are the people we say we are -- if we believe the things we profess to believe, if we want to build the world we claim to want to build -- then we must struggle with this. And it will be hard.

[H2O Man]

6. It's hard

to read the section of the local newspaper that gives a short biography of those in the military who have died in this war. I often worry that either one of my relatives or another of the kids who grew up with my sons will be in the news. When I find myself thinking this way, I realize that these kids have family and friends who will suffer and have an open wound for the rest of their lives.

It's impossible for most of us to really be able to understand what it is like for the average citizens of Iraq, who share with us those human qualities of wanting to live in peace, and to enjoy watching their children grow up, and have their daily bread and a safe place to live .... and now Bush/Cheney has stolen that from them.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. Thanks, H20 Man...

It is that sort of thought process that makes thes things so hard.

peace.

[Karenina]

8. HALLO!

:hug:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

9. Back at ya!

:hug:

[merh]

10. Every day while the weed is on vacation I update the information

and post this thread - I list the names - so that people see them as people and not just numbers. In the beginning, folks paid attention to the threads - now they let them slip by.

I still cry when I update the numbers & when I post the threads.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4387911&mesg_id=4387911

And I will continue to keep posting these threads.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

11. Thank you, Mehr. We must remember.

We must grieve.

We must stop the madness.

peace

[annabanana]

13. We can't bear the pain, and we can't allow ourselves to

look away. When faced with this, we shed another tear, and another, and then we have to let the pain go, so we can work. People here need no convincing. It's the people who haven't really thought much about it that need to see this.

[merh]

14. We must.

:cry:

[newscott]

12. I find myself in the same position now

I can't bare to think of the suffering and the unfairness of a life lost so young. Any life.

I don't watch the news reports about fires and car accidents either. What's the point of those, really?