8.28.2013

dear war criminals: don't lecture us about morals as you prepare to bomb civilians

Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity.

- Secretary of State John Kerry
The slaughter of innocent civilians is a moral obscenity? I'm betting the people of Iraq and Afghanistan* agree.

Or is only the slaughter of civilians by chemical weapons obscene? Is slaughter by bombs - by house raids and checkpoints, by torture and endless imprisonment - merely ordinary and banal?

Does white phosphorous, the US's chemical weapon of choice, constitute moral obscenity?

How about imprisoning for 35 years someone who brought to light the killing of innocent civilians, then granting absolute immunity to the people who ordered those killing? That obscene enough for you?

Yet again we are told that to punish a dictator for killing his own people, we must kill more of those people.

And we will be told this again and again, onward through the years, until we shut down this system that profits from war, and create a new system in which all human life is valued and all resources are shared.



* And hundreds of other places.

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