Conscience?

In the hidden recesses
of my conscience
dark moments overshadow
light, threatening, like
the hovering thunderclouds.

Yes, it is certainly true that I have problems with my conscience. I have certainly done things in my past that trouble me to this day. But I don’t have really important things on my conscience. I never murdered anyone, never tortured anyone, never assaulted anyone, never denied anyone something because they were not like me, never deliberately lied to protect someone who had done wrong, never deliberately cheated anyone, never committed a crime beyond stealing a book of matches or a candy bar, never deliberately abused my mother or father, and never threw kittens or puppies into the Lead Creek. I did, however, drink and smoke when I should not have, And I was also a lazy and unproductive high school and college student. What troubles my conscience the most is the drinking. Indeed, I think anything and everything I might have done to trouble my conscience has to do with the drinking.

Having said this, I wonder about others. Do you think that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and the other neocons are troubled by their consciences? After all, they have only been responsible for the deaths of some approximately 1500 American troops, 100,000 or more Iraqi civilians, and the torturing and humiliating abuse of how many unknown others. All of this for no reason other than greed for oil and power and utterly idiotic dreams of empire. I can go to sleep at night knowing that whatever I did wrong is relatively inconsequential in the great scheme of things. But what about Bush/Cheney, et al, do they sleep comfortably knowing they are murderous and dishonest war criminals, killers of babies and other innocents, butchers of Bagdad? Does Abu Ghraid and Gitmo mean nothing to them? Does their incessant and obviously deliberate lying never trouble them?