The cement was cold and wet as I lay on it looking up at the clear blue sky. I could hear the cacophony of sounds permeating my psyche, as I tried not to shiver from the damp ground. The sounds were a helicopter circling above, the gorgeous timber of an woman singing Amazing Grace, blended with the short commands of the riot police telling us to get up or face the consequences. I looked up and saw a bird gracing the vast blue with it's wings, and knew . . . if the war in Iraq happened as a few claimed, there would be as Pablo Neruda stated so eloquently, there would be 'blood in the streets'.
Four and half years from my first arrest, and blood has drenched the streets of Iraq and stained the hands of America with the wretched stink of a curse. Day after day, we hear about the eighty people killed in a market place, seventy-five killed in school, one hundred and twenty three in a mosque. Day after day the blood seeps onto the earth that Cheney claims is better now than it was under a dictator.
We are in such an incredibly horrific situation presently in Iraq, with the mounting involvement of the Saudis, Syrians and Iranians. This can escalate into a war of disastrous proportion where the dictatorship regimes of Pakistan and Egypt can also be compromised. I truly believe that Iran was always the golden prize in the ignorant minds of the Neo Cons. I still can't believe their arrogance in thinking that they could answer the question of Iraq better than Churchill. Iraq has always been an anomaly in trying to balance the delicate landscape of Sunni, Shite, and Kurd. The Neo Con agenda has always been about controlling Iran's black gold that runs deep in the Caspian Sea. It's the largest untapped resource of oil in the world, and it can line the pockets of the oil barons like nothing else. The Bush-Cheney administration are focused on a war with Iran. The heaviest concentration of U.S. naval strike forces is aimed at Iran. An Iranian family friend of mine just returned from Tehran and told tales of the bombing drills that the citizens are going through to prepare for the war. It seems every one knows war with Iran is imminent, but the Americans. We need to wake up from our apathetic anesthesia of American Idol trivia, and Anna Nicole Smith tragedies and realize there will be more blood in the streets if we don't voice our outrage. We can call our congress members. We can write to our newspapers. We can march at the protests. I can't bear to see the land of my Father, the land of Rumi and Hafez, the land of generosity and culture that spans twelve thousand years destroyed because of greed and ignorance. Pentagon sources accused Iran of smuggling weapons and explosives to Iraqi insurgents, when in fact they are Shia militiamen allied to the U.S. My fear is the U.S. will keep harassing and provoking Iran to retaliate so they can justify a war. Eric Margolis from the Toronto Sun states that "The CIA and Britain's M16 are stirring unrest among Iran's Kurds and arming Iranian Marxist and royalist exiles". We cannot allow this administration to have a carte blanche in whatever war they want to start. Why are we not giving aid in Sudan? Because the oil is already controlled by China? Why are we not helping the Afghan people who are suffering now under a revised version of the Taliban and war lords? Why are we not focusing on reversing the devastation caused by global warming?
We must take back our country from these mad men. We must give America back its dignity. Neruda said it best when he condemned the Spanish War in his poem 'I'm Explaining a Few things' " And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and moors . . . came through the sky to kill children. And the blood of the children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood.
Treacherous Generals: see my dead house . . . from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers and from every dead child a rifle with eyes and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts. And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land,
Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets!"