A Moment Is Before Us

Cheers to William Rivers Pitt for his excellent essay, "Nail It to the White House Door", available online at truthout.org. I hope you'll read it all, but I can't resist giving you a few paragraphs in advance.

The decision to make war at all costs, the decision to lie about the reasons for going to war, the massive trans-Atlantic effort to make an illegal act appear legal, and the astounding fact that more effort went into manufacturing a political pretext for invasion than went into planning for the invasion and aftermath, all of this led us into the horror-show that is this occupation.

The American military has all but conceded the fact that this war is lost. "I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said last week. "It's going to be settled in the political process." There are no more viable military options. The war is lost. It is going to be settled in the political process.

So ... all this bloodshed, all this heartache ... has been for nothing! The politican process was available before the war. It was never used. And now that's all we have left. If we even have that...

Here's what we do have:

Several weeks ago, Rep. Conyers published a letter demanding answers from the Bush administration regarding the Minutes. That letter has been signed by more than one hundred Congresspeople, and by nearly a million American citizens. Rep. Conyers will personally deliver this letter and all those signatures to the White House on Thursday.

Jawaharlal Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed India from British colonial rule, once said, "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

Thursday, June 16th, may see such a moment come to pass. It has been a long time coming, and so much remains to be done if the terrible damage of these last years is to be repaired. But a moment is before us. Let us see where this moment takes us.

Yes, let us see indeed. Who can imagine what might happen next? All we can do now is wait and see.

Personally, I am tired of waiting. I want this nightmare to end now! I know it won't, but that doesn't change what I want.

And so, like all the rest of humanity, I wait...