In 1963, a Buddhist monk burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon. The monk,Thich Quang Duc, was protesting the repressive policies of the US-backed regime that controlled South Vietnam at the time. The picture of his burning body was astonishing and horrifying. It was on President Kennedy's desk the next day and it became an iconic image of the Vietnam war.
In the end, of course, it changed nothing, and the US war killed two million Vietnamese before it ended several years late.
Jump ahead 43 years. An American antiwar protestor, Malachi Ritscher, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.
Nobody noticed.
His picture didn't get placed on President Bush's desk the next day. The corporate media didn't care. Nobody was horrified. If we don't care about 600,000 slaughtered Iraqis, why should we care about one American protestor?
His death won't change anything either.
Posted by Deck at November 26, 2006 03:37 PM