You know how the NY Times wrote a few hundred words about each and every person who died in the attack on the World Trade Center? Suppose the Times were to accord each Iraqi civilian we kill the same dignity. Of course the Iraqi victims will be unintended casualties, unlike those who died on 9/11. But, they are predictable unintended casualities, so why not remind us of the price of victory? Why not remind us that an Iraqi father searching for his child in the rubble is no different from my friend who waited for a phone call from his son who worked in the Towers? Are Iraqi lives really not worth the ink? Or our attention?

Wouldn’t such coverage help tell the world what sort of people we Americans are?

The bumpersticker “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity” pisses me off because it glosses over the hard question: Is this particular war worth fighting? Will it create a more peaceful world once the bombs stop turning people into red mist? That’s the difficult discussion we need to be having. My answer is: No! But not because bombing is always illogical the way fucking for virginity is always self-contradictory. I’m not a pacifist, so I think sometimes bombing makes sense. Our challenge is to figure out when. This bumpersticker doesn’t help.

Here is my new bumpersticker. I’m not satisfied with the wording, though. Any suggestions?

Categories: Uncategorized dw