What if the heartbreaking photo had instead been that of an AMERICAN father clasping his dying infant son to his chest staring vacantly into the camera, holding an AMERICAN child with shrapnel wounds. Amoral Mr. & Mrs. America approve sending terror under the American flag! MLK Jr said, "Every man of humane convictions must protest." Its easy. Just quote King! We need his moral leadership.

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2007! In the absence of any moral political leadership, the typical American goes about a self-centered commercially affluent life not giving a damn for the children killed in daily air strikes on "suspected" enemies of the United States in this or that far away land.

But from April 4 1967, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Prize Laureate for successful civil rights leadership, spoke from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York, calling his country. "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world", until his assassination on April 4, 1968, America DID INDEED have inspiring moral political leadership for its anti-war movement.

King's murder was just in the nick of time to save the lies underpinning the crucifixion of the population of what had been Colonial French Indochina from being exposed by our greatest civil rights leader suddenly turned anti-imperialist war activist.

And just in the nick of time to prevent the public outrage over government sanctioned white racist brutality from spilling over into a new Rev. King led majority outrage over the napalming of Vietnamese children ("Viet Cong Nationalist sympathizer children" as former Seal Commander Bob Kerrey would later point out on "60 Minutes".)

The threat Martin Luther King's moral leadership posed was eliminated with one accurately fired rifle bullet to the head, allowing the Vietnam War to be propagated for a further seven years of carnage even more monstrous than before.

Today, there is no comparable voice capable of overwhelming the slick media news management that puts across ever changing reasons for continuing imperialist war for control of Middle East oil fields while deceptively hailing U.S. terrorism as “The War on Terror”

In Afghanistan during the past months, there have been daily air strikes with great loss of civilian life - in just one strike, 105 civilians. President Karzai complains bitterly, and the Afghan parliament many weeks ago voted for a twenty-five year amnesty, negotiations with the former governing Taliban, and the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The U.S. media hides this from the public and the heavy air strikes on ‘suspected’ Taliban continue.

Concern for the many children who are cut down or maimed every day is never heard in corporate big brother media or in the halls of Congress, and certainly not in conversations at bus stops, on coffee breaks or after church.

But wait! There was photo of an Afghan father holding his shrapnel wounded two-year-old child to his chest on the front page of the New York Times, August 9th. What if that heartbreaking photo had instead been that of an AMERICAN father clasping his dying infant son in his arms staring vacantly into the camera? And not an AFGHAN child, but an AMERICAN child with shrapnel wounds? You can bet that the U.S. media would have led the way in awakening compassion and action to protect AMERICAN CHILDREN FROM MISSILE AIR STRIKES, AND PROSECUTE PILOTS AND THE GENERALS ORDERING THEM.

That photo of the horror stricken Afghan father accompanied an article titled:
"British Criticize US Air Attacks in Afghan Region - because of the high level of
civilian casualties". A few days before, the Times had articles on how the U.S. military was going to make an effort to reduce civilian casualties by using smaller bombs, but follow day came the report of whole families wiped out by an American air strike.

A U.S. pilot will from previous knowledge know the farmhouse in Afghanistan or the apartment building in Baghdad is 90% sure to have families with children inside when he releases the programmed missile. Maybe the pilot has kids of his own. He has the rest of his life to imagine how the children he ‘took out’ looked, how old, how their families and relations must have cried in grief over never seeing their smiles ever again.

Which side shall people at home in the States take? Pro-pilot or pro-children? Will those taking the side of the children be attacked as a 'Jane Fonda' or 'Mohamed Ali'?

Without a spiritual leader of the stature of a Martin Luther King, the moral conscience of the average American, busy with personal affairs, has shrunk to be a vacant space the size of the head of a pin.

The U.S. Navy off the coast of Somalia routinely produces air strikes on suspected positions of members of the former Islamic Courts government never minding Somali civilian deaths.

Air strikes within Iraqi cities and towns are called in continually, civilians be damned, on “suspected” Sunni insurgents, al Qaeda, Shiite militias, and non-Iraqis come to fight the U.S. occupation. In the U.S., NO ONE laments the great loss Iraqi life. Compassion is limited solely for American soldiers.

A Marine corporal testifying in a court-martial in Camp Pendleton, California, says a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead.

Associated Press, July 14, “Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says American troops can leave any time they want." One of his top aides accused the United States of embarrassing the Iraqi government by violating human rights. Media silence.

The great proud American soul is EMPTY of compassion for our foreign brothers and sisters, and their beautiful children 'in harms way' of America's armed forces - armed forces mercilessly firing away, often wildly in fear for themselves as hated occupiers.

Extermination by air strike is safer for U.S. troops in the alleyways of Baghdad. But pity the poor conscious stricken U.S. veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress for having witnessed Iraqi children’s death and suffering.

Published July 12, by the Independent, United Kingdom, “A Dead Iraqi is Just Another Dead Iraqi… You Know, So What? - Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq - in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.”

…”planting AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat. …“a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all - your order is that you never stop.”… “You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall …then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. We always got the wrong house.” …”I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn’t really know what else to do.” …”we’re approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, cause it’s doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it… The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified.” …”[The photo] was very graphic… one soldier has got a spoon. He’s reaching in to scoop out some of the guy’s brain, looking at the camera and smiling.” …”The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked checkpoint… and probably didn’t even see the soldiers… The guys got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next three days while we drove by them.” …”The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed simply to punish the local population”

“I just remember thinking, ‘I JUST BROUGHT TERROR TO SOMEONE UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG.’” “I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”

Even less compassionate is the ‘what-me-worry?’ attitude of Americans happily going about self-indulgent lives in bland disregard of citizen accountability for the violent acts their government - not taking seriously, government warnings that they and their children are now the targets of a burgeoning al Qaeda and who knows what other terror blowback groups in the future. They have abnegated even the slightest action for their families own safety and are not concerned about the hate being engendered all over the world by American indifference to the killing of civilians by U.S. military.

The great proud American soul is EMPTY of compassion for our foreign brothers and sisters, and their beautiful children 'in harms way' of America's armed forces - armed forces mercilessly firing away, often wildly in fear for themselves, the hated occupiers.

Without a Martin Luther King to make them wake up and take stock of themselves, Americans have sunk, in the main, to be a self-preoccupied and selfish race, frivolous in manner and vacuous in regard for rest of humanity.

We listen to bragging about free speech, yet Americans are speechlessness about anything important for society at home or abroad. Mr. and Mrs. America are only concerned with THEIR shit. What's the price of oil at the pump? Who won today's ball game? What's on sale? Their OWN health insurance and discount drug plan.

Their ministers, priests and rabbis, unlike Martin Luther King, are largely silent on moral conflict out in the killing fields, and if they speak of abhorrence in their sermons, that abhorrence is politely extinguished in the minds of the parishioners once they step outside. Should someone one break out from the ranks of strict self-interest and bring up moral responsibility regarding permanent war, rules of social etiquette will quickly but silently reassert themselves to the embarrassment that someone upset about the enormous indigenous death toll in U.S. occupied nations.

This writer was a kid during the great depression when Americans in general were still not entirely politically speechless. We got two school holidays thanks to the high esteem our nation held the lives led by Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Maybe sounds corny today, but along with the warm feeling of gratitude for the two days we could have fun instead of school, we also felt some noticeable call to make our spine straight and resolve never tell to lie all year in the name of father of our country, and to take pride in always respecting everyone's freedom, inspired by the president who freed our enslaved brethren and implanted this theme in our American historical heritage. (Back then there was still a lot of innocence in childhood.)

Now only one American's birthday is celebrated with a national holiday. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reaching up from his grave of martyrdom grants us a one-day holiday from work and school, and most will have the idea of straightening our spine like King's spine was straight about racial equality.

But THOSE of us who bitterly remember that King was shot down exactly one year after denouncing cruel U.S. capitalism and its murderous wars in and on the Third World, we make our spine straight to act in the name of Rev. King’s second fight as well, namely, the fight to protect humanity and saving the world from the rapaciousness of corporate government's genocidal foreign policy of war for resources and selfish trade policies causing economic suffering for the majority of mankind.

In the August Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate most of the candidates hands flew up in hasty knee jerk reaction at the question, “Would you give the order for a missile strike to take out Osama bin Ladin or a top al Qaeda leader if innocent civilians would be hit raise your hands.” How would these presidential candidates like to be gunned down by law enforcers shooting into a crowd to get their man? Whew! Another amoral U.S. President to look forward to. It is so to be expected. Another Commander-in-Chief with his (or her) own private CIA for criminal covert acts while Congress and the courts look the other way.

We have heard a lot about vengeance for 9/11. Many an undereducated, disinformed U.S. soldier has been quoted as proud to be in Iraq or Afghanistan looking for vengeance. Will the parents of children slaughtered in air strikes seek vengeance by suicide bombing Americans? There never was any vengeance for the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian parents who picked the entrails of their children from the leaves of palm trees after carpet bombings. (see testimony given to the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal). Nor for the Panamanians killed when the U.S. invaded to arrest President Noriega, who had been on the CIA payroll for thirty years by U.S. Presidential order.

How many of us believe that America should be brought to justice for its ‘mistaken wars’? In 1986 The International Court of Justice at The Hague found against the U.S. and ordered it to pay reparations to Nicaragua for damages done. The U.S. ignored the judgment and continued to fund attacks on Nicaragua. As long as the mammoth corporate state bully is sure it can continue to get away with murder, no one will be really safe.

Want to help our Iraqi brothers and sisters to keep their oil and their lives, and fight against corporate media selling us open-ended occupations? Quote the words of a national living icon - Kings credibility is stronger than anyone alive today, and his purity of purpose and his sacrificed life make it impossible for the war hawks so to go up against his evaluations and pronouncements.

“We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways ... Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.” MLK Jr.

Authors Website: http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong's Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations. Dissident Voice supports this website with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.