The Clown and the Dance of Death

It had been tempting lately, to see George Bush more in pity than anger, now that Cheney has been de-fanged, and the moving vans are at the door. After the affair of the flying shoe I was forced to acknowledge both his reflexes and his wit. Oh well, have a laugh and let it go...he's almost gone, what further harm can he do in the next twelve days?

The answer that I hoped would not come, came last night with the vote to abstain cast by the United States in the United Nations Security Council. The otherwise unanimous passage of the Gaza ceasefire resolution, serves as the further example we did not need of the extreme corner in which the BushCheney jackassery has painted us. It leaves me speechless that he is so clueless. His blind defense of Israel under any and all circumstances fans the flames of hate against both Israel and the United States, and closes doors to solutions that might emerge under a leadership with a vision for peace and a commitment to achieving it. There are many in Israel and throughout the Arab/Islamic community who would join the United States in supporting solutions. But solutions begin with conversations, and so far, no go. I noticed in the paper today, that Condelleza Rice is backing the U. S. off from its' pre-election announcement of a diplomatic office opening in Tehran, sometime after Thanksgiving. Nice bait and switch Dick.

Day in and day out violence, as in Gaza, as between Israel and the people of Palestine, becomes a sustained rage of who started what, and whose crime is the unforgivable sin. A pointless argument taking us nowhere. The horror of the boundless human potential for deceit and cruelty becomes the new darkest human dream, our feared worst nature, our alien enemy self imagined into life by fear-driven hallucination. Endlessly repeated patterns in a ghastly parade, beyond the point where hope would be expected to give out. How is it that the trap is set that keeps us in the dance of death, as it does today in Gaza?

It is not because we are helpless, or hopeless or stupid. It is because we do not yet understand the truth of who we are. When we know who we are, we will know how to change. And then, the world will change.

It is also because humanity depends on and is consistently betrayed by leaders who act out of vanity, greed or callow stupidity. The many heros of the conflict in Israel/Palestine, struggling for the past sixty years against crushing odds towards peace, have been badly served by a western leadership of equal parts ignorance, indifference, and incompetence, especially within the American leadership of the past eight years. With all proper respect offered to the true peacemakers of the mideast, who have set the historic process of peace on its' course in spite of the tough odds. Those who keep hope alive.

To help keep hope alive the great number of us need to relinquish our cynical belief in our powerlessness to effect a solution, and thereby overcome our failure to join a vision of peace as not only possible but essential, and therefore inevitable.

DHL