Omar Suleiman

Do we even know what was done in Iraq and Afghanistan?

These drones that drop using our tax dollars under Democratic and Republican regimes and kill thousands of innocent people in weddings in Yemen and Somalia, are these justified?

And when you think about dehumanization,

Can the average American name a single victim of the Iraq War?

Is there a picture that comes to your mind?

Is there a person?

Absolutely not, because that's the dehumanization.

And I often talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his progression as a faith leader in America, as a political leader in America.

Dr. King was deeply unpopular when he took his stand on Vietnam.

And he mentions how first he had to see

through the lens of the soldiers, because many of the soldiers that were lost, American soldiers, right?

And that was a crime that they were sent to fight a war that they should not have been sent to fight.

And there was an injustice that was done towards them.

He said, but things really changed when he started to see it from the other side of the bullet, when he started to see the world through Vietnam, through the Vietnamese child.

And that's where he resorted to breaking the silence.

That's where he changed his tune.

Because we dehumanize our victims so much that they're not even relevant to our discourse until they become able villains to our story.

And then now they're attacking us because they hate us.

Now they're blowing us up because they hate us.

Their religion tells them to do this to us.