Christmas Eve 2008

Many years ago at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, poet monk Thomas Merton wrote these words :

Go tell the earth to shake
And tell the thunder
To wake the sky.
And tear the clouds apart
Tell my people to come out
And wonder

Where the old world is gone
For a new world is born
And all my people
Shall be one.

To tell the earth to shake
With marching feet

Of messengers of peace
Proclaim my law of love
To every nation
Every race.

And say
The old wrongs are over
The old ways are done
There shall be no more hate
And no more war
My people shall be one...

There shall be no more hate
And no more oppression
The old wrongs are done
My people shall be one.

The Emperor's shoes

King George has not been content to spend his last days on the throne spinning out ridiculous fables claiming that his Iraq "mission" really was accomplished after all. He had to add insult to incalculable injury with a surprise visit to that poor, throttled country. I suppose he thought he had one more chance to gloss over his mad war.

So he went into the US fortress in Baghdad known as the Green Zone to join President Jalal Talabani at the podium.

That 's when enemy fire came in. Not just one shoe. Two shoes. A sign of absolute disdain.

Bush nimbly dodged both shoes. But they landed smack dab on the front page of countless newspapers and web sites around the world. His ridiculous fables were knocked out of circulation by a pair of shoes.

And coming out of his duck, the Decider remained accused:

* 4,209 US troops have been killed in Iraq
* Very possibly as many as 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed
* About 150,000 US troops are still there (though not for long now)
* The attack on and occupation of Iraq have given birth to waves of budding new terrorists.
* Iraq is nothing like the new democracy that Bush predicted. It is in second place among the most corrupt countries in the world--tied with Myanmar and very close to the worst of all, Somalia.

Bush accomplished the mission. Oh yes, he sure did. And the world is flat.

The last days of Gitmo

Surely President Barack Obama is going to close the Guantanamo Bay hellhole they call Gitmo. Apparently the closure will be legally and logistically complicated. But Obama said he would do it, and probably the only question now is how soon.

The detention center, in use since 2001, has held 775 prisoners. About 420 have been released without charge. (Don't forget that many of these prisoners were just grabbed "off the street" when pointed out by people with who knows what motive.)

The latest twist: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (of 9/11 infamy) and four of his accomplices now say they want to plead guilty. It sounds like another play for "martyrdom." In fact, Mohammed had said some time back that he wanted to be executed and become a martyr. Having undergone water-boarding (as old as the Spanish Inquisition and recognized as torture by legal experts and human rights advocates around the world), he was at the center of the US torture debate. Now he will probably move instead to the center of the death penalty debate.

In any case, Gitmo itself is going to disappear. I doubt its scar on the face of our nation ever will. But maybe the scar will be an effective early warning in the future when another budding dictator eyes the White House.

Lagging behind again

The BBC reported today that more than 100 countries are signing a treaty in Oslo that bans current designs of cluster bombs. Then the treaty will go to the UN where more of the 192 member nations can sign. Should we be surprised that the US (along with Russia and China) will not be signing?

These horrendous bombs, loaded with smaller "bomblets," do not always explode. In effect, they become land mines that maim and kill people.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Red Cross, says that south-east Asia saw "several hundred million sub-munitions.... dropped and many tens of millions remain today." He adds that civilians in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam "have lived with the threat of unexploded sub-munitions for four decades."

The treaty does not prohibit cluster bombs altogether. It permits the development of more precise bombs with lower failure rates. The US says it is following these criteria already. So then, why not sign and thus speak to the whole world?

Maybe Barack Obama will reverse the stubbornness.

And maybe the world will finally arrive at a total ban on cluster bombs.