Thursday, November 27, 2003

Thanks & Repentance http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/2003/11/27.html#a1529 To: custer-slept-here@whitehouse.com To the people of Iraq, Gulf War II is like Pearl Harbor -- or like Wounded Knee. by Jane Stillwater,  Berkeley, CA (Diebold country) Thanksgiving originated here approximately one thousand years ago. Out of charity, some Wampanoag Indians invited some Pilgrims to their traditional Thanksgiving feast. A short time later, colonists returned the Indians' hospitality by attacking a nearby village and massacring 600 people. Moral: Colonists make terrible house guests! Was Geronimo a terrorist? No, he was just a man, defending his home and family. Did Chief Joseph have weapons of mass destruction? The US Army thought so. They killed 5,000 of his tribe's appaloosa horses. I guess the Army thought they were WMDs.   To the people of Iraq, the US invasion is like Pearl Harbor (except the Iraqis got more warning and 50,000 more people were killed.) To the Iraqis, Shock and Awe is like Wounded Knee. But for America, Iraq is like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- or like the quagmire of Vietnam. And which does Bush's bombing of Baghdad resemble more? 9-11 or Mai Lai?   Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Let's have every US soldier out of Iraq by Christmas!  A nd let's get that lazy fat-cat Congress to do it. They work for us not for Bush. The energy bill? The let's-sell-out-MediCare bill?  T he $87 billion Halliburton fiasco? The disastrous environmental bills? Gutting education? The mother-endangerment bill? The no-overtime-from Scrooge bill? The tax-relief-for-plutocrats bill? The Shock-and-Awe bill so that we could have another Wounded Knee in Iraq? Money to brutally attack our right to free speech in Miami? It's time to turn up the heat, start cooking up laws and leaders who will benefit us instead of them -- and to tell those turkeys in Washington to GET STUFFED. This year we are NOT thankful for corporate welfare, political greed and leaders who consciously try encourage human nature at its worst. Let's be thankful instead for the goodness that lies at the wellspring of the human soul -- the thing that makes us unique. "Imagine a world where EVERY Child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!" 7:32:07 AM    comment

Of Thanks and Mercy Of Thanks and Mercy By James Carroll, The Boston Globe, 11/25/03 AT THANKSGIVING time more than 30 years ago -- when I was Catholic chaplain at Boston University -- I preached yet another sermon on the evils of the American war in Vietnam. I probably took off on US consumerism, too, with a swipe at the Pilgrims of Plimoth Plantation for their eventual betrayal of Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief who taught the Europeans how to catch those turkeys. After Mass, a professor whom I admired rebuked me. Speaking of the students who made up the bulk of my congregation, she said, "These beleaguered kids don't need another guilt trip from you. They need to be reminded their lives are filled with good things for which they can be grateful." I think of that professor now, and of those students. Preaching is not the purpose of this column, but I am aware of its obsessive drumbeat on the subject of President Bush's war. More dead GIs over the weekend, more mutilated. More global terror as the blowback spreads. More opposition in the streets abroad. But at Thanksgiving, can't the columnist let up? War, war, war. What about all the things for which we Americans can be grateful? As Thanksgiving approaches this year, how can we square our proper impulse to celebrate the bounty of life with a citizen's solemn responsibility to measure the course our government has set and to reckon with warnings of even rougher water ahead. On Thanksgiving, yes, we pause to reflect on what we have been given, but we also measure what we are making of our abundance. It is a time, therefore, of moral reckoning.... READ THE REST AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1125-02.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:11:16 AM    comment

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