- How many times must a parent bury a child?
-
- Well, in the case of Muammar Qaddafi it's not only twice:
once for his daughter,
- murdered by the United States bombing on his home in
1986, and again on 30 April 2011 when his youngest son, Saif al Arab, but
yet again for three young children, grandbabies of Muammar Qaddafi killed
along with Saif at the family home.
-
- Now, I watched Cindy Sheehan as she bared her soul before
us in her grief; I cried when Cindy cried. Now, how must Qaddafi and his
wife feel? And the people of Libya, parents of all the nation's children
gone too soon. I don't even want to imagine.
-
- All my mother could say in astonishment was, "They
killed the babies, they killed his grandbabies."
-
- The news reports, however, didn't last more than one
half of a news cycle because on 1 May, at a hastily assembled press conference,
President Obama announced the murder of Osama bin Laden.
-
- Well, I haven't forgotten my empathy for Cindy Sheehan;
I haven't forgotten my concern for the children of Iraq that Madeleine
Albright said were OK to kill by U.S. sanctions if U.S. geopolitical goals
were achieved. I care about the children of Palestine who throw stones
at Israeli soldiers and get laser-guided bullets to their brains in return.
I care about the people of North Africa and West Asia who are ready to
risk their lives for freedom. In fact, I care about all of the children--from
Appalachia to the Cancer Alley, from New York City to San Diego, and everywhere
in-between.
-
- On 22 May 2011, I had the opportunity to visit the residence
of the Qaddafi family, bombed to smithereens by NATO. For a leader, the
house seemed small in comparison, say, to the former Clinton family home
in Chappaqua or the Obama family home. It was a small whitewashed suburban
type house in a typical residential area in metropolitan Tripoli. It was
surrounded by dozens of other family homes.
-
- I spoke with a neighbor who described how three separate
smart bombs hit the home and exploded, another one not exploding. According
to the BBC, the NATO military operations chief stated that a "command
and control center" had been hit. That is a lie. As anyone who visits
the home can see, this home had nothing to do with NATO's war. The strike
against this home had everything to do with NATO adopting a policy of targeted
assassination and extra-judicial killing--clearly illegal.
-
- The neighbor said he found Saif Al-Arab in his bedroom
underneath rubble; the three young grandchildren were in a different room
and they were shredded to pieces. He told of how he picked up as many
pieces as he possibly could. He told us that there are still pieces there
that he could not get. He asked us to note the smell--not the putrid smell
of rotting flesh, but a sweet smell. I did smell it and thought there
was an air freshener nearby. It smelled to me of roses. He asked me why
this was done and who was going to hold NATO accountable.
-
- Muammar Qaddafi was at the house. But he was outside
near where the animals are kept. It is a miracle that he survived. From
the looks of that house and the small guest house beside it, the strike
was a complete success if the goal was to totally and thoroughly demolish
the structure and everything inside it.
-
- NATO wants us to believe that toys, items and clothing,
an opened Holy Koran, and a soccer board game are the appointments found
in military command and control offices. I wonder if we could find such
articles in NATO's office in Brussels.
-
- The opened Holy Koran seemed to be frozen in time. In
fact, there was a clock dangling from its cord--dangling in space. And
indeed, for the four young people in that house at the time of NATO's attack,
time had stopped.
-
- The concussion fron the bombs were so great that eery
tile on the walls and floors of the home had been knocked from the walls.
Black burn marks scorched the walls. The force broke a marble or granite
countertop. The bathtub was literally split into two parts. Shards of
the bomb were everywhere. I wondered if the place was now contaminated
with depleted uranium.
-
- The Qaddafi home is a crime scene--a murder scene. The
United States prisons are full of men and women who are innocent--even
on death row. I wonder where the guilty who are never prosecuted go.
-
- Now, if the International Court of Justice were really
a repository of justice, it would be investigating this crime. Instead,
it is looking for yet another African to prosecute. We in the United States
are familiar with this: on our local news every night, we are saturated
with photos of Black and Brown criminals with the implication being that
White people don't commit crime. The moment the face of someone arrested
is not shown, then we know that the culprit is White. It's the unwritten
code that we people of color all live by wherever in the world we might
happen to be. Global apartheid is alive and well and exists on many levels.
-
- I left the house sick in my heart. As I was about to
depart, the neighbor begged me, asked me over and over again, why had this
happened? What had they done to deserve this? He seemed to not want me
to leave. Honestly, I think I was his little piece of America, his little
piece of President Obama and I could help him to understand why this course
of action was necessary from my President's point of view. He said NATO
should just leave them alone and let them sort out their problems on their
own.
-
- I did leave his presence, but that man's face will never
leave me.
-
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned, "History will
have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition
was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence
of the good people."
-
- In response to my previous article, "NATO, A Feast
of Blood," I received the following quote about Buddha from Shiva
Shankar who excerpted Walpola Rahula's "What The Buddha Taught:"
-
- "... The Buddha not only taught non-violence and
peace, but he even went to the field of battle itself and intervened personally,
and prevented war, as in the case of the dispute between the Sakyas and
the Koliyas, who were prepared to fight over the question of the waters
of the Rohini. And his words once prevented King Ajatasattu from attacking
the kingdom of the Vajjis. ...
-
- ... Here is a lesson for the world today. The ruler of
an empire publicly turning his back on war and violence and embraced the
message of peace and non-violence. There is no historical evidence to show
that any neighbouring king took advantage of Asoka's piety to attack him
militarily, or that there was any revolt or rebellion within his empire
during his lifetime. On the contrary there was peace throughout the land,
and even countries outside his empire seem to have accepted his benign
leadership. ..."
-
- Please don't allow special interest press and war mongering
gatekeepers of the left to blot out the tragedy unfolding in Libya. Please
don't allow them to take away our chance to live in peace throughout our
land and with countries inside and outside our hemisphere. Congress should
vote to end NATO's action in Libya and barring that should assert its Constitutional
prerogatives and require the President to come to it for authorization
of this war. And then, Congress should heed the wisdom of the people of
our country who are against this war and vote for peace.
-
- --
- http://dignity.ning.com/
- http://www.enduswars.org/
- http://www.livestream.com/dignity
- http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction
- http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction
- http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun
- http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney
- http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney
- http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun
-
- Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.
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