Recruiting Terror

I found Tankwoman's last post very affecting and moving. And I want to let her know that my partner (who is Jewish) and I (who am, at best, an agnostic former Catholic) have joined a local group called the Arab-Jewish Peace Alliance. This group has been holding Friday night vigils for the past five weeks on a very visible street corner in the midst of the busy restaurant/club district on Central Ave. The vigil lasts for almost two hours, and last week (the first time we have attended) ended with a form of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, offered for all those who have perished in the past month of strife in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel.

I add, in my own heart, the thousands of lives also lost in Iraq over the past three years. While all eyes have been on Israel and Lebanon, we seem somehow to have lost our focus on our own culpability for the massive disruption and loss of life in the whole area we call "the Middle East." Many others, in this blog and elsewhere, have written about the connection between our government and the Israeli government as regards the current wars in the area. But, meditate on this, a sentence I just read, hidden in the middle of an article, Signs Point To a Surviving Terror Network, in this morning's WaPo:

U.S. intelligence officials now identify the war in Iraq as the single most effective recruiting tool for Islamic militants. (My emphasis)

Among the prayers that those in this administration and Congress should be saying is a resounding Act of Contrition, and after the mea culpas should come action to reverse this current state of affairs.

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