Losing Our Will - New York Times
Op-ed by Bob Herbert
"I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home....
...The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
Op-ed by Bob Herbert
"I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home....
...The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
We are witnessing the demise of the great American Experiment and seem powerless to act decisively, intelligently, in defense of our common values and bonds and with enlightened self-interest.
Our obsession with the trivial and meaningless blind most to what is happening before our very eyes. America has become a country in rapid decline.
Unless we act forcefully, soon, with a clear vision of the problems we face as a nation and with a determination to bear the costs of the solutions, America will cease to matter.
Unless the failed governance of BushCo. is soundly repudiated by sweeping Progressive victories in the fall, our downhill slide will simply pick up speed.
The consequences of maintaining the status quo will be devastating for the younger generations. It is they who will pay the highest costs for the greed and avarice of those who now simply dismiss the concerns of the majority with a "So?".
Our country is in peril. Patriots must act.
Catch you later.....
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