Until May 13, 2006 I never met someone who met that description.
I cannot explain why Richard Perle was at the Eyes Wide Open exhibit in Washington DC last weekend. There were 2437 empty pair of combat boots, representing the empty American lives left behind in this war, the human cost of war. I thought it strange that he would be there standing on the edge of the exhibit, almost as if overseeing the damage he did as the architect of this war.
A few of us Gold Star Moms saw him hovering, as if a vulture over his prey. The reasons to confront him were not complicated. We approached the area and when people realized who we were, they let us in. First Celeste, Sherwood's mom asked him why. When my turn came, I introduced myself and told him to look into my eyes and tell me why my only child came home in a flag covered box? He couldn't answer, of course. He gave some kind of lame patronizing, response about democracy in Iraq in many years. I asked him if it was worth it and he couldn't give a good response to that either. I pointed to the photo of Ken on my shirt and said, look at this face, tell me why! He wouldn't look.
I walked away from the confrontation into the arms of some of the other Gold Star families and cried. "They don't care, they just don't care" If I thought for one minute that they cared about the damage they have done, the overwhelming sadness that they have caused to the families, I might think differently, but they just don't care.
I wonder if he had ever met someone who was so violated by his war? If he hasn't, then my pain of confronting him was worthwhile. He cannot say he hasn't been touched by this war.
I had a radio interview after the confrontation and told them the story. The interviewer asked me what it was like, meeting Richard Perle. I asked her, "Have you ever looked into the eyes of someone who has no soul? His eyes have no life in them; it was frightening.
These people have evil in their eyes and in their hearts. There is a special place in hell for all of them.
4 comments:
Karen,
good for you. It takes courage to approach the powerful and say "I think you're wrong".
I guess I'm not shocked by Perle's reaction, or lack of one. But how else will he get what he did if no one tells him directly?
Perle was fighting for his friends, his family, the people he left behind -- plenty of whom owe the fact that they are no longer in Iraq to his underhanded lobbying of Bush and the New American Century neocons.
But he wasn't the evil.
The evil involved here was identified long ago when Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned against the power of the military-industrial complex. The faceless tens of thousands of businessmen, congressional staffers, Pentagon officers and civilians, and the constituent who continue to vote for congressmen and congresswomen, such as our own, who don't bat an eyelash at the use of force to leverage our claim to the limited oil supply.
Scapegoating is convienient, sometimes, but rarely accurate.
Anon-
Spare me the violin playing for Perle, he has as much blood on his hands as anyone in this administration.
No intent to scapegoat anyone in this administration, they have all earned their place in the hall of shame and in their special place in hell.
It is too bad that Eisenhower's comments about our military industrial complex still ring true, but that doesn't mean anyone in this adminstration gets a pass. Also, the media, most of our legislators, war profiteers and many members of the military are complicit.
I guess that's why this is so hard for me to take. No one is willing to stand up to this new world order and all the while, our soldiers are dying.
Shame on all of them.
Hell is retrospective empathy -- which eternity provides.
That you made cold your heart for putative geopolitical necessities will tenth-circle you for a thousand years for each dead and maimed, Mr. Perle et ilk. (That another two months of Inspectors who were being allowed everywhere where wmd was claimed by informants to be would have proved that there were no looming mushroom clouds will particularly impale your conscience which you don't have now, but will have eventually as pitiless eternity reminds you of your bleak heartlessness.)
In medieval and earlier times, the leader was the one who led you into battle -- not the one who sent you into battle. (Not that I'm keen on any version of the battle model, but at least that one was honorable at some primitive level.)
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