Tread lightly on the things of earth

Okay, I may be a month past the buzz but now I too am awed by Quicksilver, the first Mac OS X utility to come along that challenges the indispensible LaunchBar. Maybe it’s better. And it’s free. It made me say “Awesome!” and seriously, I don’t say that much.

Jasmeet provides the review that clued me in, and leads me to Dan’s, Todd’s, Jack’s, and Jay’s reviews. Plus there’s the official manual.

BTW, LaunchBar continues to be awesome itself. It sets the standard IMO.

On April 7, Tami Silicio, a civilian contract worker, captured a somber-yet-tasteful photograph of an aircraft cargo hold full of U.S. flag-draped coffins of soldiers being returned from Iraq via Kuwait (similar to the photo shown here — see update at end of this entry).

The Seattle Times published Silicio’s photo on April 19 in article The somber task of honoring the fallen (alternate photo location) —

On the April day depicted in the photograph that accompanies this story, more than 20 coffins went into a cargo plane bound for Germany [from Kuwait]. Silicio says those who lost loved ones in Iraq should understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

Two days later on April 21, Tami’s employer, U.S. military contractor Maytag Aircraft Corp. fires her and her husband, as reported in the Boston Globe, Woman fired by military contractor for published photograph of flag-draped U.S. coffins.

This really bugs me. I understand (but don’t accept) the point that Maytag Aircraft Corp. is within rights firing an employee if that employee breaks a no-photos policy. And I understand the point that some families of the dead may not want media publicity, although I don’t see how the anonymity of flag-draped coffins invades anyone’s privacy. I see it more as honoring their sacrifice. (See Seattle Times, Images of war dead a sensitive subject.)

But I’m calling a spade a spade: This no-photos policy is government censorship, a hiding of the harsh realities of war from the U.S. populace, exposure to which might give the most gung-ho warhawks pause, during which pause the realization might dawn that it is failed U.S. policy that is killing these troops.

If we can’t state clearly why these sons and daughters and friends and relatives are dying and why “it’s worth it,” then we need to move heaven and earth to stop the dying. Now.

Every day we are silent means new cargo holds full of coffins, just like the one Tami photographed, returning home in secret, day after day after day.

My whole life I’ve wondered how so many German Christians in the 1930s could stand by as Nazi fascism rose to power. Now I think I know: being silent, being passive, giving tacit approval, enabled its rise. We’re enabling its rise again. If I sound like I’m overstating, see if the dictionary definition isn’t sounding eerily familiar:

fas·cism. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Our U.S. “belligerent nationalism” is, sad to say, obvious to the whole world. As to the racism, it’s visible in our having killed an estimated 10,000+ Iraqi civilians, whom we’re not even bothering to count accurately. Many of these were innocents, and nearly all of them have families now bearing all the reason anyone needs to seek revenge, retaliation, retribution. Just as we’re doing, some of these victims’ friends and families will act to effect retribution. Liberation my ass. Liberating people from their bodies is not liberation. We are making the world’s terror situation incomparably worse:

“When the fighting is over in Fallujah, I will sell everything I have, even my home,” said a resistance fighter who gave his name as Abu Taif Mashhadani. He wept as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter, who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. “I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed.”
—Revolts in Iraq Deepen Crisis In Occupation (via Billmon)

If there’s hopeful news whispering within this deadly cacophony, I think it’s this: we’re only three requirements short of getting back on track. We need to —

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.
(Now this is anti-terrorism!)

A detailed plan? No — this is a new direction that affects all plans and likely leads to altogether different ends. Can we do these things? To my surprise, I believe we can. One at a time, each of us learns, each of us chooses. And I have a hunch I’m Monkey #94.

[story links via Daily Kos and The Village Gate]

2004-04-23 update: And the wall comes a-tumblin’ down? Even if in slo-mo overall, this came quickly: The New York Times runs story today, Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken. Bill Kick, operator of The Memory Hole, filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year asking for photos of coffins arriving from Iraq at Dover AFB in Delaware:

The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. …

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. …

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should not be.

Just watched tonight’s TiVo’d Bob Woodward interview on 60 Minutes. I didn’t think I could be more dumbstruck by anything the Bush team does, but I am.

Stammering on anyway …
I expected the Woodward revelations to be mildly critical, but they struck me as more devastating than any others so far. Here’s the CBS News episode article, Woodward Shares War Secrets.

Having given the order [to invade Iraq], the president walked alone around the circle behind the White House. Months later, he told Woodward: “As I walked around the circle, I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty. Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will. I’m surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for forgiveness.” …

“The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment,” says Woodward.

But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? “That’s a really good question. The Constitution doesn’t say that’s part of the commander in chief’s duties,” says Woodward. “That’s his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble. …”

How does the president think history will judge him for going to war in Iraq? …

“And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

Aaargh. I see this stance as either shockingly immature or else b*tshit crazy. Messianic delusions do happen, but usually not to persons old enough and equipped enough to destroy the world. I note that real messiahs indeed liberate people but never, as Jesus demonstrates, at the point of a sword. Or the barrel of a gun. Or the invasion of a country. Or the launching of a do-it-yourself Armageddon.

Extensive discussion at Daily Kos, Woodward on 60 Minutes: Following the Money. And no doubt elsewhere.

In the midst of the bad news coming out of Iraq, I — who, unlike soldiers and civilians there, am free to escape at will into diversion for relief — find a bit of diversionary good news: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is now in syndication in my viewing area, and the TiVo is stocking up on DS9 episodes.

Deep Space Nine aired from 1993 through 1999, and the handful of episodes I saw during those years hooked me — I found DS9’s darker twists relative to other Star Trek series fascinating. (And, I admit it, I was kind of ga-ga over both Jadzia and Kira.) But DS9 aired in time slots during which I was almost always in class — its 7-season run corresponds exactly with, for me, “The Night School Years” — so most of its episodes will be first-run for me. After the series ended, I was disappointed to find no DS9 episodes in syndication.

My long-dormant TiVo DS9 season pass has sprung to life now, however, having found this Spike TV schedule blitz:

Beginning in April, DS9 will debut on Spike TV with a weeklong “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 9-Hour Marathon.” From Monday, April 5 through Friday, April 9 Spike TV will broadcast nine hours daily of DS9 episodes from the first two seasons (and two episodes from Season Three), in consecutive order. From noon through 9:00 PM, ET/PT each day, fans can watch episodes from “Emissary, Part I” at noon on Monday and on through “The Search, Part II” at 10:00 p.m. on Friday.

Following the Marathon, DS9 will move into its regular timeslot, weeknights at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT, beginning Monday, April 12.

Woo-hoo! I’ve been waiting for this for years!

Sometimes another person can, in just a few words, sweep away cobwebs that are obscuring meaning in a way I only notice when a clearer, brightly-lit meaning jumps off the screen at me.

Candace does this for me as she writes about John Dominic Crossan’s lecture yesterday on what life was like in first century Israel:

Crossan spent a great deal of time talking about justice and how our form of justice differs greatly from the form of justice touted by both Judaism and Jesus. We see justice as retribution, but Crossan argues that the Old Testament and Jesus both argue for distributive justice — a form of justice that distributes God’s mercy and love evenly to everyone.

Yes, yes! This is the justice I’m always longing for … and agitating for.

I use the word “justice” frequently, and these days — by the grace of God and some excellent theology teachers — I habitually mean distributive justice. But others could easily assume I mean retribution when I say “justice” as I haven’t been accounting for that as an unintended connotation. Hmmm, that would change my meaning rather radically.

Candace then expands wonderfully on this idea of upending our might makes right retributive understanding of justice, as Jesus does with Rome’s “first victory, then peace” slogan, replacing it with the Jewish notion of “first justice — that is, the fair and equitable distribution of God’s blessings on earth — then peace.”

Thanks very much, Candace.