Have I forgotten?

I’m in the air­port shut­tle some­where in Wash­ing­ton State between SeaT­ac and Ever­green. I haven’t seen this many rust­ed out cars in the front yards of trail­ers since I was in the Carolinas.

The shut­tle dri­ver has the radio on the coun­try sta­tion. (Yes, Ham­mer­head, I remem­ber. The dri­ver choos­es!) It illus­trates some pret­ty pro­found cul­ture shock that in just a cou­ple hours I’ve gone from a place where they’re play­ing War Pigs on the radio sta­tion to a place where they play clips of GWB in between the songs.

What I find offen­sive is this song “Have You For­got­ten” by some coun­try artist. He starts out singing that “some peo­ple” don’t think there’s a rea­son for us to go to war, and goes on to ask us how we felt on Sep­tem­ber 11th.

Well, No. I haven’t for­got­ten. I haven’t for­got­ten that I’m on my way to the memo­r­i­al ser­vice for a 23 year old woman who died thanks to US for­eign pol­i­cy in the Mid­dle East.

I haven’t for­got­ten that our nation has aban­doned the prin­ci­ples of the Unit­ed Nations. And I don’t mean that maybe the US has left what­ev­er some claim the UN has mutat­ed into. We’ve act­ed in direct con­tra­dic­tion to the UN char­ter, attack­ing a sover­iegn nation with­out cause.

I’m try­ing to remem­ber Saint Fran­cis’ words and let go of my anger and rage. It’s hard to do when faced with some­one who thinks that tragedy jus­ti­fies sell­ing the soul of our country.

But Saint Fran­cis did not say “where there is wrong I may kick ass” or “where there is wrong I may go fix it.” He said “where there is wrong I may bring the spir­it of for­give­ness.” And I, pissed off at this coun­try singer, need to remem­ber that as much as anyone.

Anoth­er thing I just heard that rubs me the wrong way: God Bless Amer­i­ca. I think we need to fol­low Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s lead and stop pray­ing that God be on our side and instead keep as a giv­en that the Almighty is on the side of right and pray instead that we might be on God’s side. And maybe take actions in accor­dance with being on the side of right instead of blind­ly lash­ing out in anger and ask­ing God to take our side.

Would Jesus bomb Bagh­dad? Yeah, right.

TCS

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