We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

10 Years After the Invasion of Iraq: Hard to Remember, Harder to Forget

Click here if you wish to access introduction by Francesca Fiorentini of WarTimes to a very interesting 16:56m video from Real News included in the article. I can't find the video listed at the latter's website, so Fiorentini must have gotten an advance copy of the interview with human rights attorney, Michael Ratner.

Ratner discusses, among other Iraq war issues, how liberal media played a critical role in managing the consent of the American people to support the criminal invasion of Iraq.
It has been 10 years since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that by now most know was a war for oil. Though difficult to look back on this decade, it is the ease at which we forget that condemns suffering veterans to the shadows, Iraqis to a country in shambles, and leaves the American people vulnerable to future seductions of war-making.