The imperial projects will continue, Wall Street will be unimpeded in its malfeasance and criminal activity, social programs will continue to be cut, maybe not at the same speed as under a Republican Administration, but it's all headed in the same direction.

Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.

In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.

What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying."

War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.