"even the pope calls for peace"

Much is being made of the fact that the US has now lost 4,000 troops in Iraq, and that this terrible milestone was reached on Easter.

Since I'm not Christian, and since most of the people being killed in Iraq are not Christian, I can't say I find the Easter date very significant. And the 4,000 number, though awful, is deceptive, when there's at least 90,000, possibly more than 1,000,000, Iraqi dead (and they're all civilians!), around 60,000 Americans wounded, who knows how many Iraqis wounded, along with untold physical and psychological destruction.

But if Easter helps people think about peace, then Easter it is. Why not.

Here are some people who want us to think about peace. This protest took place during an Easter morning mass at Holy Name Cathedral, said to be Chicago's most prominent Catholic church, and the home of arch-conservative Cardinal Francis George.



I love protests that disrupt big ceremonies. They're great attention-getters, especially now that the protests enjoy an extended after-life on YouTube. Some Tibetan protesters disrupted today's Olympic torch ceremony in Greece.



That's Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee, at the microphone. Other Tibetan protesters lay in the road in the path of the torch-bearers.

IOC head Jacques Rogge was on hand to say that the 2008 Games are advancing human rights in China. (It would be nice to have some other source besides China corroborate that.) In fact, Rogge suggested that the military crackdown in Tibet is only world news because of the Olympics.
He said the current violence in Tibet is an example of how the Games have brought human rights issues in the region to the fore.

"Tibet, rightfully so, is on the front page. But it would not be on the front page if the Games were not being organized in China."

By that logic, the Olympic Games should be held only in countries with the worst human-rights records.

But I got news for Jacques Rogge. The world is watching Tibet, and we would be watching anyway.

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