Echoes in Eternity

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

What we do in life echoes in eternity.  

What we’ve done as individuals, what we’ve done as a nation that tortured human beings, will echo in eternity.

John Donne, Meditation XVII . . .

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.  

What language were we speaking when we locked human beings in cages?  What language were we speaking when we tortured human beings to death?  We were speaking the same language Inquisition torturers spoke, the same language Stalin’s NKVD torturers spoke, the same language Hitler’s SS torturers spoke, the same language Khymer Rouge torturers spoke. That’s the language we were speaking.

It’s a sadistic language, a degenerate language, an obscene language only psychopaths speak.  Yet we as a nation spoke that language.  We spoke the language of torture.  We did not stop what was being done in our name.  We were all holding the leash . . .

 

Why in the world are we here?

Surely not to live in pain and fear.

Surely not to inflict pain and fear.

Jonathan Turley . . .

Torture has always been a war crime.  It’s always been immoral.  The question is not whether the act is immoral, but whether moral people will stand forward and say, “We’re not going to act like politicians for once.  We’re going to act like statesmen and we’re going to stand by principle and we’re going to say, ‘Yes, let’s investigate.’ And if there are crimes here, let’s prosecute.”  And I think it’s so very, very simple.  You know, we have third world countries that when they have found that their leaders committed torture war crimes, they prosecuted them.  But the most successful democracy in history has seen war crimes and is doing nothing about it.  And that’s an indictment not just of George Bush and his administration.  It’s an indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime.

Instant karma’s gonna get Yoo, if we have anything to say about it.  It’s going to get Bybee and Gonzalez and Addington and Cheney and Bush.  It’s going to knock them right off their feet.  But if we don’t acknowledge our own responsibility, it will knock all of us off our feet.  Instant karma’s looking us all right in the face.  We’d better get ourselves together, and rejoin the human race.

There’s only one way to do that.  Investigate.  Prosecute.  Convict.  

John Donne . . .

No man is an island, entire of itself . . . any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The bells of karma will toll for all of us if we don’t do what needs to be done.  We have the blood of a million men, women, and children on our hands.  What we as a nation have done under Bush and Cheney cannot be torn out of our history books.  That chapter has been written in blood, and we’ve been the authors.  We have a new chapter to write, a chapter of prosecutions, a chapter of convictions, a chapter the world will read, and upon reading it, maybe they’ll forgive us for what we’ve done.    

We as a nation unleashed a war of aggression.  We tortured human beings.  We let Wall Street elites beat the global economy to its knees, put a hood over it’s head, and shock doctrine the hell out of it.  Our guilt will echo in eternity.  But if we take responsibility for what we as a nation have done, if we prosecute those who committed war crimes in our name, if we prosecute those guilty of economic crimes against humanity, if we hold them accountable, if we seek redemption as a nation and attain it by making amends for what we’ve done, that will also echo in eternity.