04.06.08 - 7:18 pm

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Iraq. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of Iraqis and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Iraq. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad Iran into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Iraq immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Iraq, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Iraqi people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Iraq, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war."

- a few excerpts from speeches made by martin luther king, jr. replace iraq with vietnam and iran with china and the text is frighteningly appropriate for our current state of affairs.

when julie watches me type, it makes me uncomfortable.