If we could read the secret history
of our enemies, we would find sorrow and
suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

George Bush visited our town this week. He spoke to more than 9,000 people, crowded into the local rodeo grounds. They waved flags and sang patriotic songs, shouted slogans and laughed in all the right places. They gave the President more than 14 standing ovations.

Please don’t misunderstand. These are not naïve people. They’re just hopeful.

Many have seen their sons and daughters and husbands and wives leave home for extended tours of duty in a far-away and dangerous place. They need to know that their loved ones will come home safe. They want to believe that this war in Iraq is serving a purpose. They’re invested.

Just like our president.

It’s too late to go back and start over. People are dying every single day, trying to clean up a disaster that’s of our own doing. Not just “our people” either. Plenty of innocents have been lost, and most of them probably weren’t Americans.

I only hope our nation is learning the truth that “violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

“It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.

“Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.