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Do unto others
I've been upset at our goverment's actions overseas for about as long as I can
remember, and so I shared some of Chris's thoughts along the lines of "amazing
nobody did this to the Pentagon a long time ago", and I can understand why
oppressed peoples who see the US supporting their oppressor would cheer at a
blow struck here, as misguided as I think they are. I don't understand why so
many Americans feel that an attack (not this specific attack, but *any* attack)
is *so* surprising and incomprehensible. I've been thinking for years that
something like this would happen. I wrote in an email (not to this list) at
least five years ago that my fear in this post-cold-war world is that we'd wake
up one morning to devastation, and no one would claim responsibility. Of
course, my nightmare vision was a small boat carrying a nuclear bomb sailing
into some US or Israeli harbor, not crashing passenger jets.
And now the most powerful military in the world is flailing around, looking for
someone to vent on. I am very afraid about what comes next. Bush's speech
really unnerved me, with its overly simplistic notions of good and evil. Let's
be real here, we were *not* attacked because we are "the beacon of freedom" --
that's ludicrous. We were attacked because we've been stomping on whoever
we've felt like -- oh, sorry, I mean "protecting American interests" -- and
someone decided to stomp back.
I am in no way condoning what they did. It was horrific and appalling. I am
saying that it seems silly to me to act like we, as a country, are innocent.
Those people in those towers were innocent. It was a brutal and reprehensible
act of murder by desparate and misguided people. Calling them "evil" ignores
the evil in our own souls and oversimplifies the situation; it dehumanizes the
"enemy" and enables us to plunge ahead in our righteousness. It ignores the
complex matrix of social, economic, and religious factors that put someone in a
position where he would be willing to give up his own life to take thousands of
others, whom he doesn't even know. If we are going to prevent this from
happening again, the answer is not to incinerate everyone involved with (or
sympathizing with those involved with) this horror. Such a "solution" does
nothing to allieviate the causes that drove these people to this position. If
you believe these people were evil, that they snickered in their lairs, petting
their hairless cats while plotting destruction against an innocent maiden, then
getting rid of the people will solve the problem. But *these* people are
replacable. Kill them off without redressing the systematic problems and there
will always be more dispossessed, disenfranchised, and desparate people, and
there will always be clever and charasmatic people able and willing to turn
that helplessness into action in exchange for power.
This is *not* another Pearl Harbor. I hope to God this will not lead us to
another Hiroshima.
All I am saying that simple approaches and simple answers are not going to
help in this, a very complex situation.
Peace to all, and I pray for justice, not vengeance.
--
Don Smith Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
"At first I said to myself, 'serves America right, you ugly and selfish
America,' but after seeing what was going on the TV, I cried,"
-- Jarunant Nakatong, owner of a Bangkok travel agency.
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