There will be no safe place in Baghdad." The words of U.S. military strategists haunt me as I drift to sleep. Images of unfathomable wreckage and destruction force themselves on me. Of the millions who will be trapped in a city under siege. Of families buried alive in their own homes--or listening to the screech of cruise missiles not knowing if they will be the target. Of the thousands who will survive the bombs only to suffer a slower death as their city is cut off from water, food, communication and medicine.

The empire has locked its sites on Iraq and the world is told to fall in step or risk being next.

On their side is the weight of a brutal history, the blood of millions from Indonesia to Iraq, from Nicaragua to the Philippines. There are Black Hawks, bunker-busters, smartbombs, tens of thousands trained to kill and die for empire and conquest. There is the scream of bombs, the combined lying power of CNN, NBC, ABC, and a whole medley of hourly war-hungry propaganda and distortion. There are military tribunals, "disappearances," torture islands in international waters, wiretaps, profiling and shredding of basic rights. These are the tools of a global power fiend trying to extend their grip--the tools of world-class gangsters trying to ensure that no one is ever in a position to challenge them again.

Their arrogance, their cruel glee at their own butchery, their lying hypocrisy, their seeming disregard of the people's heroic struggles is part of their game .

We have to stop them.

And even as we can see their nightmarish world shaping up around us--of Apocalypse Now around the world and Minority Report here at home--another side is shaping up as well.

Think about it: The nation's most beloved poets are disinvited from the White House and instead lend their poetry to the struggle against the war. Rebel kids seize their five minutes in the ring with prime- time reactionaries and, in the eyes of millions, make them into fools.

We give notice that there is a new, see-you-in-the-streets generation that will not turn over the future of the planet to murdering cowboys. Those who dwell in America are taking off the blinders--beginning to see the rest of the 6 billion people on the planet, acknowledging their humanity and acting on the understanding that our futures are bound together. People who only a few months ago were going about their own business are leading tens of thousands to take on the biggest bully on the planet.

Society's voices of conscience have been relentless in breaking ranks and making their moral opposition a force that inspires millions. Whole towns and cities are rejecting reactionary laws like the Patriot Act. Veterans from the imperialists' own military machine have reached inside themselves and found the strength to tell the truth to the new recruits about the horrors of unjust wars. We have the best poets and the bravest fighters.