How now that trinity Medals of Honor awarded Tenet, Paul Bremer
and General Tommy Franks have stained the heart of integrity and
transformed the very words “presidential honor” into an oxymoron.
Everyone
who has grasped the hand of our self-anointed war president now feels
the sting of humility and disgrace. Powell is gone. Rumsfeld is gone.
Wolfowitz is gone, spiraling down the rabbit hole, wrapped in his own
arrogance and cronyism. Ashcroft is gone and Condoleezza Rice has all
but vanished from the stage.
The latest diplomatic initiative
came and went like a whisper in the night, a token gesture from a token
neocon, a one-time renaissance woman who sacrificed the promise of
greatness when she consigned her soul to a rabid brain trust bent on
the path of war.
As it is for Condoleezza Rice, who might have
been a concert pianist or Nobel prizewinner, so it is for the
generation that nurtured her and blessed her with the promise of hope.
Shame, where is thy blush? It hides behind masks of honor, loyalty and patriotism.
Among
the forgotten coalition of the coerced (our allies in the conquest of
the Middle East), Asnar of Spain was first to fall, Musharraf of
Pakistan is hanging by a totalitarian thread, and Britannia’s Blair is
cursed to live out his days in the shadow of the Bush wars, as his
companions shake their heads and wonder what might have been.
As it is for Tony Blair, so it is for the generation of new and bold ideas.
The
bell chimes and we think of Rice, Powell and a loss of innocence. The
bell tolls and we think of Camelot, the Bay of Pigs and a president who
at least knew when to cut his losses. The bell rings out and we
remember Rudy Giuliani’s 9-11 testament: “Thank God George Bush is
president.” The bell sounds and we think of patriotic boys and girls
who will never become fathers and mothers.
The bells echo in
the chambers of our collective soul and we wonder if we have finally
learned enough to spare future generations the sorrow of an endless
cycle of violence and destruction.
As we step forward and look
back upon our selves, we reflect that we were the generation with the
greatest promise, the greatest moral founding, the greatest hope and
vision for transforming the world we inherited, yet we squandered that
bountiful promise for the darkest vision an American president has ever
advanced.
While we launched a campaign of aggressive war, wars
of dominion and economic conquest, our allies in Israel, Pakistan,
Philippines, and Russia wandered further from the paths of justice and
democracy.
While we led the campaign of denial, the world marched toward global catastrophe.
While
we pushed our armed forces to the brink of implosion for a fool’s
campaign of horror, we allowed genocide in Darfur to roll on as if the
community of nations was obliged to tolerate inhumanity in dark skinned
populations.
While we squandered half a trillion in fortune on
the destruction of other nations, we allowed a great American city to
wallow in virtual ruin, transformed as much by indifference as by an
act of nature.
When we hear the bells, we reach inside and mourn a generation lost. We hear and we contemplate the words of John Donne:
“Any
man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind: And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.”
As of Saturday, May 12, some 3,391 men and women of the American armed forces had died in the Iraq War. The latest:
Army Pfc. Roy L. Jones III, 21 of Houston, Texas.
Army Sgt. Jason W. Vaughn, 29 of Luka, Mississippi.
Jazz.
Writings 
The truth is a twisted sister and rarely sets men free. The cold bloody truth of the war in Iraq is like a toxic cloud that poisons everything it touches. 
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