David Smith-Ferri, of Voices in the Wilderness, discusses the US administration’s plea for Americans’ patience over the increasingly bloody and intensified war and occupation of Iraq, while their own lack of compassion rings through in their decisions to not attend over 1400 hundred American soildier’s funerals, and the administrations “pattern of failures”. He has also shared his powerful poem Comes a Cleansing War.

By David Smith-Ferri

The story today is going to be very discouraging to the American people. I understand that. We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life. And — but it is the long-term objective that is vital…
George Bush, 1/26/05, referring to the deaths of 36 US soldiers in Iraq.

On June 19th, 1999, author Stephen King was walking on Route 5 near his home in western Maine. A man in a van on the same road that fateful morning chose to turn around while driving, to feed his dog, sitting in the back seat. Not surprisingly, with his eyes on and off the road, he was unable to control the van, which swerved in and out of his lane for nearly a half mile. Coming around the bend where King was walking, the vehicle veered onto the shoulder and struck King, hurling his body over the van and leaving him in a crumpled heap in a ditch on the side of the road, narrowly missing a rocky ledge. King was badly hurt and fortunate to survive. The van driver brought his vehicle over to King, got out, and sat down next to him with his cane across his legs, as though the encounter had been planned, and he was waiting for King to wake from a nap. He simply sat there, in actuality waiting for the police to arrive. At one point, in what was characteristic of both his laconic manner and his conviction that this was merely an accident, an inconvenience, he offered words to this effect: “You and I are having a bad day, aren’t we?” (Interview with Stephen King, NPR, 11/21/03)

On Wednesday last week, “the American people” also had a bad day.