why we fight

the rage against the people who drop the bomb, who lie to us, who kill in our names, and the futility i feel knowing my screams won’t reach the ears they’re intended for. the hot tears that come in seeing a man who has list his son, a man who has probably only cried twice in his life, and one of those times on camera. i don’t know how it works, or how it all evens out in the end. how can this even out in the wash? the only way it does, it seems, is when we force it to even out, and then something happens to disrupt the balance all over again, and once more we talk of evening it all out. to every turn, its season, i get that, but i think that’s a cop-out, a rationalization for us to continue doing what we want to do. there are people in society who rail against the idea of addiction as a “disease,” who reject any notion that one doesn’t have complete control over one’s actions, and stopping is a matter of willpower alone. how can you do this to your family? to god? to us? this is the question i pose to the ones killing, rejoicing in the death of another human being, using the propaganda of war to justify taking another’s life: can you stop? can you stop succumbing to the hate machine for a day? for an hour? can you, for five minutes, stop thinking of the blood and the guts and the victory and ego and realize that in war, there are people who die, there are people who suffer, there are people whose souls come ripped undone, thrown aghast in a gutter in a third world alley, irretrievable. and can you stop your disease? the thirst to loot and plunder, can you take a break? can you stop anytime you want to? here’s the secret: they kill us because we kill them, and then we kill them because they started killing us, and someone else is paying us to kill someone else, and those someones are really on another’s side, and we’re all dead. it takes one to break a link. it takes one costa rica to abolish its army, it takes one nation to remain neutral. and it takes one nation to betray the trust of an international audience, to kill its own first, others second.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1422779427989588955