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Do we have to blog this war anymore?

Yesterday I saw a photograph in the Globe and Mail of feet. There were three or four pairs of bloodied feet stacked on top of each other from a morgue in Iraq somewhere. Some of these feet were no bigger than my two year old son’s feet.

I know this war is sick. I know that no one is of one mind about it. Many Canadians and Americans think it’s great, many do not. Many Iraqis are grateful, many are angry. Many people have died horrible deaths in this war, and many more will continue to die. And many will NOT die becasue this war has happened. We can horse trade woulds and shoulds until the cows come home.

But death is happening and it’s obviously a price people are willing to pay. Warmongers are willing to see babies killed if it means the ultimate goal is acheived. Peaceniks are not at all comfortable with this assertion, and despite the fact that we were the only ones wailing against the hundreds of thousands that died under UN sanctions. The moral high ground seems to be the trophy that everyone feels they can lay claim to. And everyone seems to be fighting for a piece of it.

So I’m going to let them.

I’ve said my piece to my leaders and I’ll keep you informed about the time I’m wasting expecting Stephen Harper to give me a list of the dictators he invited to his party. But frankly, I give up. I’m going back to blogging about things that are beautiful.

I’ll let others post pictures of the collapsed skulls of children and trade higher hit counts for this pornography. (Props to Euan for changing his mind). I’ll let other bloggers build their reputation on how fast they can produce the “real story.” The bottomline is that I am just too overwhelmed with people who feel like the thing to do is blog the war. So many people have followed that trend that there is hardly a blog left anymore that points me to beauty and peace. I tip my hat to whiskey river and Gassho and riley dog among others. These folks are providing little islands of peace, not by ignoring the war, but by carrying on with their very purposeful explorations of beauty. And that’s where I’m going too, to that field that Rumi promises us.

You know, before this war began, there was lots of suffering and bloodshed going on around the world. Most of us ignored it and we continue to ignore it. Very little blogging happened about Zimbabwe or Cote D’Ivoire or Colombia. Most bloggers don’t understand or even care about war and suffering, even as they link to the theatre surrounding them. Blogging as a movement hasn’t matured enough that we can get really good insight from a variety of sources about the whole world around us. Instead, the blogging world seems to me to me like a pack of five year olds playing soccer. Everyone is following the ball. Dumb mobs.

That’s partially why I assembled my list of human rights abuses in the coalition of the willing. There is no NEED to blog the war, I don’t think. We choose to do it. And I’m incresingly finding that choice, for me, to be disingenuous.

I’m no expert on Iraq, or warfare, or death. What I have to say is irrelvant next to outfits like the BBC bloggers who are actually there, or the StratFor folks who aren’t but who can provide pretty interesting opinion. I have struggled with my own moral feeling around this war, but who are you, dear reader, to care about that? I’m not out to win hearts and minds.

I think a lot of the johnny-come-lately bloggers who have become Instapundits are too caught up in playing “gotcha” games to really matter. I wish the warbloggers would stop screaming at people and sign up and fight. Go put your money where your bluster is. I wish the peaceniks would get off their duffs and STOP this thing. If the peace movemnt, full of reductionist positions as it is, was really effective, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Me, I’m finding better ways to use my time. I’m going back to concentrating on the work we have to do around here. The good stuff that’s happening in and around Vancouver I’m involved in, like Storyscapes and the Ashoka Institute for Community Practice and the Vancouver Aboriginal Council.

Sorry about this rant, but I’m cranky and haunted by the bloodied feet of a child much like my own. I can’t shake the image, and when I look at my son, I can’t help but think of him lying in that pile. It makes me sick. That’s when I know it’s gone too far. I’m in tears for the kind of world where this is okay. And I’m turning my attention back to the beauty that surrounds us, the poems and culture humans make and the wonder that the universe instills in us.

When you’re sick of the war, come here for a rest. I’ll put the tea on.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.

–Rumi