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National Sacrifice
Yesterday I watched on tv the funeral of Gerald Ford at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Ford showed mercy rather than revenge, said the religious man in white robes.
I disagree.
Ford showed himself more concerned with expediency than with justice. Mercy comes not in the phase of establishing guilt for crimes committed against the people but in sentencing. Richard Nixon didn’t reach that point. Richard Nixon never received justice. To seek justice is not the same as to seek revenge, as so many have implied this past week. Justice seeks truth without fear of what it might find. Revenge can sometimes be carefully crafted to look like thin justice.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Saddam’s execution was timed for the middle of a U.S. news cycle preoccupied with making sure Gerald Ford remains an American everyman (despite his doubting the war in Iraq through Bob Woodward). The hanging was timed for many to be preoccupied with New Year and Muslims focused on Eid ul-Adha–an Islamic day of sacrifice. If it weren’t for the cell-phone video, we might not be talking so much about Saddam Hussein’s hanging. Oops. Timing didn’t hide this one.
Speaking of sacrifice, that is going to be the word to brand the new effort to drag young people into the military, according to a BBC report. SACRIFICE. Send more troops to Iraq no matter what the majority of Americans say, including the servicepeople themselves. Keith Olbermann had something to say about national sacrifice in his latest Special Comment.
When you hear the words “national sacrifice” and selective use of words like “mercy,” you know that strong national mythologies are being called upon to distract from the realities of what we’ve all seen with our own mass mediated eyes.
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