The response to the Boston marathon bombing was swift, effective and appropriate. The two alleged perpetrators were taken out of action in just a few days.
It was a much more fitting response than that of the Bush administration 10 years earlier. After all, planting bombs that kill and maim is illegal and a police matter, not a military problem.
The Iraq war was started on the basis of a lie. But a poll released in the U.S. last June found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded the country.
Pablo Picasso’s most famous work, Guernica, shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. The piece has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.
A tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica was displayed on the wall of the United Nations Building in New York City at the entrance to the Security Council room from 1985 to 2009.
It is ironic that on Feb.5, 2003 a large blue curtain covered the tapestry so that it was not visible in the background when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. Some diplomats, in later talks with journalists, claimed that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.
The terrible scenes of Guernica and the Boston Marathon bombing should both stand as proof that violence needs to end – not that it should continue.