This cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Joel Pett of the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader, on the U.S. drone strikes says it all for me. Is this what we have come to as a nation? Is this what we want for our foreign policy? Are Americans only of worth?
This is the chair used to force feed U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who were captured in the indefinite Global War of Terror On Terror. At least 100 of the 166 prisoners there are on hunger strike. They are protesting their indefinite detention. (See more Guantanamo Joint Medical Group Hunger Strike Response Photos here.)
This is Diane Wilson, CODEPINK hunger striker for the closing of Guantanamo Bay Prison, who chained herself to the White House fence. (See story here and here.) (Diane explains her hunger strike here.)
This is Julia Ward Howe. She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but later, following the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote in 1870 The “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world,” later known as “Mother’s Day Proclamation” on behalf of world peace. (See here.)
Me? I love my country, the U.S. of A., but I am not a proud American. I, not to be naive, suggest the United States government be a practitioner in its foreign policy of what has come to be called the Golden Rule, the ethical maxim of the world’s religions and philosophies. After all, our recent defining event of 9-11 was blowback for the neglect of that rule. The Golden Rule does not say do to others before they do to us and to only treat Americans as we would wish to be treated.
As an American citizen and a mother, I Declare World Peace.
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See also the excellent post by Lisa Savage of CODEPINK Maine: Sorry We Raised Our Kids to Kill.
declaring world peace 