On September 11th I, like most in this country, sat glued to my television. I watched as the major networks played and replayed video of two of the tallest buildings in the world as they fell, crumbling, to the ground and then swallowing lower Manhattan like a volcanic explosion of pyroclastic flow. Thoughts running through my mind of the thousands of working men and women made victims in this spectacle of disgusting mass murder. I watched a horrid and ghastly act of incredible violence, worthy of something out of a Hollywood screenwriter, and, again like everyone, I felt the deepest sadness and sympathy for those killed or injured as well as their friends and family.
Undoubtedly, the perpetrators of this horrendous crime have no regard for human life and I have no sympathy for them. I join people everywhere in expressing healthy, justified sorrow and anger over the events of 9/11 and the actors that inflicted such suffering. I also whole heartedly condemn this terror and believe that this kind of heinous theft of life could never be justified or condoned.
While I could never fathom the destruction and death toll, I mourn what my mouth could never explicate and what my mind could never wrap itself around. I mourn now and have been mourning for years. Similar emotions filled me, and many like me around the world, during numerous other atrocities. Atrocities like the US backed murderous and, at the time, unprovoked attacks by Israel and it's blood thirsty militia allies on the camps of Palestinians living in miserable conditions in Lebanon. Palestinian attacks of the northern areas of Israel had ceased and Israel was desperate to provoke it's enemies into giving it a reason to invade. Atrocities like the use of American made helicopters and bombs being used to destroy Lebanese ambulances. Atrocities like the continued embargo of Iraq because of which hundreds of thousands of children have died as a direct result. When asked about the deaths, Madeline Albright was quoted as saying, "this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it." Atrocities like the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by the US, destroying half of all that countries pharmaceutical supplies. An unknown number dying afterwards due to the lack of medicine for any number of ailments. Atrocities like these, committed in the Middle East nations, and a thousand others in a thousand other locations.
Of course it's no wonder why, so called, "extremists" in the Arab and Islamic states would resort to drastic actions given these transgressions against their own people as well as Israel's apparent immunity to criticism by the western world and the US foreign policy in general. The exact nature of this weeks terrorist attacks may have been impossible to know ahead of time, however, that they were coming should have been. In a world of US preponderance and hegemony over the oil producing nations, these sort of crimes were an inevitability and, at the very least, should have been expected.
Has the national media addressed these issues? Have they asked at all why this has been done? No. The silence has been deafening and a crime in and of it's self. The journalist community hasn't even discussed the source of the terrorist's (namely Osama bin Laden) training. Who do you think taught him to build bombs, devise attacks, and to network in the underground? The US. The CIA spent ten years in Afghanistan, during the Soviet invasion, teaching the Mujahadin how to be terrorists. Ten years and countless millions spent coaching and outfitting the same people we see smiling on our televisions labeled as "prime suspects."
Now, in the aftermath, we hear the frightening language of jingoism and xenophobia from so many corners of American society. Mosques being vandalized, Arab Americans being harassed and enduring death threats, talk of carpet bombing Afghanistan, and discussion of civil liberties being suspended. At it's source, the media, national government, and the power elite. A Democratic representative from Georgia said of Afghanistan during a session on 9/12 "I say we bomb the hell out of 'em" and "if there is collateral damage, so be it." Striking to anyone paying attention since it is a virtual paraphrase of a quote taken from Osama bin Laden during an interview with a reporter in 1998, causing an uproar in the media. Timothy McVeigh also said something nearly identical in an interview.
It should also be obvious that Afghanistan is a scapegoat. Our chances of actually finding bin Laden are not good, an outcome the public would not except, consequently there must be someone to take the fall. In this case that someone is a people. A people who are prisoners of their own country. Slaves of their own leaders. Living in constant fear of a stray bullet or bomb, fired in a civil war where neither side has anything positive to offer the country. A people that have experienced the worst that humanity has to offer for decades and, now, will have to experience still more death, destruction, and darkness. Innocent people will die in retaliation for the death of innocent people. All because blood must be shed. In a world of vengeance and retaliation, it seems that the new century has brought no new understanding or knowledge and we are doomed to spiral down the same vicious cycle.
So how do we react? We do have a choice, we do have options. We can express our healthy, justified sorrow and anger. We can, in the words of Howard Zinn, "honor the dead with peace rather than war." We can seek to heal, not destroy. We can seek to better understand and educate ourselves as to the motives behind such disgusting acts and thusly be better prepared to end this sort of madness while also preparing ourselves on how to fight future instances. We may also refuse to do so and sit on our pedestal of relativism, close our minds, and blindly support the victimization of the third world, in which case more of the same is likely to occur. When ignorance and hatred rule over tolerance and knowledge our own humanity is decapitated, and the terrorists win.
Again, my thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to the victims of the events of 9/11 and their loved ones. Your loss is a blow to mankind and can never be forgotten or excused. Those culpable could never be defended for the horrid crime they committed. It is truly a crime against humanity.
Anon.
Birth sign: Aquarius
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