katrina & iraq

In trying to process the madness of these times, I remembered back to a commencement address in 2003 by Chris Hedges, one of my favorites. I re-read it today, and found it startling. Here's the money quote from the speech (remember that this was Spring of 2003):

We will pay for this (war in Iraq), but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

It connects the dots rather well.