Endless War and Women

An overt political rant is simmering within me.  As some of you know, I spent a good chunk of my life, resources, and precious time when my daughter was in her teen years doing peace work.  I joined with CodePink Women for Peace in February of 2003 in the streets of DC and last worked with them in DC in October of 2010.  Seven years of my life were spent countering the deceit that the Bush administration promulgated to justify waging war on Iraq.  All the information that has “come out” in the last many years  was known in 2002.   Barbara Lee reminds us of this.

 
I have little respect left for “the media.”  The well-scripted talking heads on most cable news and Sunday shows court, kowtow, and lend the legitimacy of broadcast to the architects of the lies that created the framework to support the  invasion of Iraq.  MSNBC is a notable exception.  But they too, far too often,  synthesize and sanitize the reports that they air with repetitive sound bytes rather than journalistic presentations.
It can be easy to forget  that the “borders” of countries are usually nothing more than calcified artifacts of the spoils of war.  I recommend reading The Map that Ruined the Middle East. to refresh your knowledge about the historical partitioning of the old Ottoman and Persian empires.  It is a very readable article for those of us who have little tolerance for military history and will allow you to speak on why the words Sunni and Shia, and Arab and Persian are at the core of the violence and horror that is playing out in the Middle East, Africa, and in parts of the old Soviet empire.  When reading this, do remember that all writing stems from a viewpoint.  The viewpoint behind The Tower is conservative and comes from The Israel Project that is based in Jerusalem. We screwed up an already mangled situation in the Middle East when we supported the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein in Iraq  (Yes, Virginia  we supported Iraq during the Iran Iraq War.  Remember the infamous scene  shown below?) and later when we invaded Iraq under both Bush I and II.

As women, as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, isn’t it time that we say, “Stop.”  Stop marching blindly forward. Stop acting from political positions.  Stop acting like walking on the path we are on will lead us to anywhere but extinction.
At some point every mother learns that you cannot change everything in the world, but you can give your children the healthiest meals you can, provide the safest shelter for your children that you can, and inform the individuals we have entrusted with our governance what we need to raise our children.  All we can do is the best we can.  We are facing environmental and climate change on a scale that will leave our descendants in an unstable, scarcely life-supporting world  that we would not even recognize as our dear old Mother Earth.  It is time for the leaders of the world to listen to the leaders of families.
It is time to think sensibly, like a woman, and clean this mess up.  There is no room in our planetary home to allow religion, corporate profits, or political or technological allegiances to distract us from the real work of building a sustainable future for our children’s children’s children.  Let’s put down the placards, the weapons, the labels of left and right, and even the dogma that overlays our Holy Books, and start building a sustainable peace.  Like always, it is ultimately up to the women organize ourselves and our families in productive, sustainable tasks that work toward a better tomorrow.
We cannot all run for office, but we all sure as eggs is eggs, can tell every one of our elected officials that we want war to stop, we want them to stop funding war,  and for all of them to start discussing sane, logically constructed approaches to responding to and redirecting processes that are destroying our lives and world.