DARK DAYS Posted September 14,2001 It took days of watching it replay over and over before it became real. The shock brought us together. We called loved ones. If we were fortunate enough not to be directly involved, we counted our blessings. We volunteered in droves. I think we all got, in a very visceral way, both how precious and fragile life is and how life as we knew it has probably changed forever. Our perspective shifted. A woman on one of my lists cancelled her pedicure. Our frivolities stuck out like cold sores on prom night. As I write this on Thursday morning, I still can't imagine turning on the TV and finding General Hospital and ads for those groovy new purple pills. I have to tell you, I'm scared. It's not so much that I think something like this is going to happen again right away, but I'm scared about us. I'm scared of our anger. My mother has cancer. She won't get emotional or spiritual help. She won't relate positively to the real solution. I live every day with anger that comes spewing out willy-nilly at anything that moves. It takes from her the very quality of life she is so afraid of losing. It strikes me as a metaphor. The terrifying fact is that the loses we have suffered are nothing compared to the loses, world wide, that will be suffered if we do not control our anger and direct it where it belongs--at the individuals who perpetrated these horrendous acts. Then we have to put our ego aside and look at history, at the roots of the problem, and at real solutions. In our personal lives "victim" is a dirty word. We claim we are responsible for our lives. When our lives go wrong, we counsel one another to refrain from blame, to look at how our own actions contributed to the result and at how we might change ourselves to create a different result. In our national life, however, that position is considered close to treason. Over and over, I hear politicians say that anyone who harbors or supports such people in any way are equally responsible. But we are talking about others. We are not talking about ourselves. We have had days of continuous news coverage, but there is a lot that isn't being talked about, and I'd like to share some of what I have learned. This article is my attempt to say, "Slow down and take a deep breath," because the latest polls show a full 84 percent of us want to retaliate militarily and indiscriminately, even if it means many more casualties or all-out war. First, let's look at this country we are so hot to bomb. Afghanistan. It is an extremely poor nation full of very oppressed people, whose life expectancy is 45.88 years. Women may not work or go to school. Homes containing women must paint the windows, lest some passing male spy them through the glass. In the first five months of this year, some 19,975 Afghans applied for asylum, making them the largest single group to do so. There have been three years of drought and, in spite of a government that harbors terrorists and commits flagrant human rights violations against its people, the United States has given Afghanistan $124 million in aid this year. A truly amazing fact that contributes to the terrible poverty of the Afghan people is that for the past decade Afghanistan was the world's leading exporter of opium--since 1999, they produced 75 percent of the opium in the world--but in July of 2000, the Taliban government decided that the growing of poppies for drugs is anti-Islamic. Within the course of a single year, in spite of famine, the production of poppies, which evidently do well under dry conditions, went to none-zero-zip. We've been spending billions on a futile War on Drugs; Afghanistan won theirs within a year with a simple edict, in spite of the fact that the people have nothing to grow and are starving. That's totalitarianism. Now, here is something I found very disturbing: On May 22, in response to additional aid sent by the Bush administration, Robert Scheer, columnist for the LA Times wrote: Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. If, like me, you are not a Bush supporter, you may be licking your chops, but wait. A report on MSNBC's website contained the statement: The international community has shunned Afghanistan's Islamic rulers over their human rights violations and their harboring of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile Washington blames for masterminding bombing attacks on U.S. interests. It also has remained silent about Afghanistan's drug ban, outraging the Taliban. The message here is clearly that U.S. foreign aid and the cessation of poppy growing have nothing to do with one another. I think this is something very important to understand as we draw our conclusions in all this. In this so-called Information Age, we can probably find a reliable source to support any position we happen to hold. If we want the truth, we have to be willing to dig for it. Everything is being spun so rapidly that we are all dizzy and don't even know it. We heard, for example, that some Palestinians cheered. That is true. But it doesn't stand alone as truth. Of Yasser Arafat, Reuters said, The president has discussed ways to work in order to build up a united Arab position that confirms that all Arab countries are ready to take part in an international coalition against terrorism. Arafat also gave blood for American victims. By focusing on one fact or another, our attitude and the decisions we support can be controlled without us even realizing it. There's one other thing no one is talking about in relation to the word responsibility. According to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian, as quoted by the BBC, Osama Bin Laden received his security training from our CIA. He left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in a jihad backed with American dollars. An August 24, l998 article posted on MSNBC's website went so far as to state: Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said. Now, of course, Hatch didn't know bin Laden was going blow up the World Trade Center. At the time, bin Laden was being trained to use his terrorism against someone else. But, we can't just outlaw terrorism against ourselves and people we support. We have to take a strong stand against all terrorism, against all human rights violations. Because, as our own experience is showing us, pain leads to rage, which strikes out to create more pain in an endless cycle of suffering. We hear over and over that what happened on Tuesday was an assault on freedom. It absolutely was. But when Americans vicariously attack those in the Moslem community, they are also assaulting freedom. If we choose to remain a free people, we cannot afford to let our grief and anger at this horrendous, unthinkable attack turn us into that which attacked us. We need to demand justice; but indiscriminate retribution against civilians who had nothing to do with what happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania will undermine everything we hope to be. Thomas Jefferson said, A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. We cannot allow ourselves to be seduced into believing history is a simple interaction between good guys and bad guys. History is and always has been a very complex affair. We need to study it, to look at it from many perspectives. We need to learn from it. Then we need to turn to the God of our understanding and pray for wisdom as to how to change it. Some interesting links: Arabic Media Internet Network See what the Arabs are saying A very scary account of the Soviet's experience in their war with Afghanistan. Source: United States Army, Foreign Military Studies Office They Can't See Why They Are Hated. Source: British Publication The Guardian Waging Peace in a Terrorist Age. Source: AlterNet Website |
DARK DAYS Posted September 14,2001 It took days of watching it replay over and over before it became real. The shock brought us together. We called loved ones. If we were fortunate enough not to be directly involved, we counted our blessings. We volunteered in droves. I think we all got, in a very visceral way, both how precious and fragile life is and how life as we knew it has probably changed forever. Our perspective shifted. A woman on one of my lists cancelled her pedicure. Our frivolities stuck out like cold sores on prom night. As I write this on Thursday morning, I still can't imagine turning on the TV and finding General Hospital and ads for those groovy new purple pills. I have to tell you, I'm scared. It's not so much that I think something like this is going to happen again right away, but I'm scared about us. I'm scared of our anger. My mother has cancer. She won't get emotional or spiritual help. She won't relate positively to the real solution. I live every day with anger that comes spewing out willy-nilly at anything that moves. It takes from her the very quality of life she is so afraid of losing. It strikes me as a metaphor. The terrifying fact is that the loses we have suffered are nothing compared to the loses, world wide, that will be suffered if we do not control our anger and direct it where it belongs--at the individuals who perpetrated these horrendous acts. Then we have to put our ego aside and look at history, at the roots of the problem, and at real solutions. In our personal lives "victim" is a dirty word. We claim we are responsible for our lives. When our lives go wrong, we counsel one another to refrain from blame, to look at how our own actions contributed to the result and at how we might change ourselves to create a different result. In our national life, however, that position is considered close to treason. Over and over, I hear politicians say that anyone who harbors or supports such people in any way are equally responsible. But we are talking about others. We are not talking about ourselves. We have had days of continuous news coverage, but there is a lot that isn't being talked about, and I'd like to share some of what I have learned. This article is my attempt to say, "Slow down and take a deep breath," because the latest polls show a full 84 percent of us want to retaliate militarily and indiscriminately, even if it means many more casualties or all-out war. First, let's look at this country we are so hot to bomb. Afghanistan. It is an extremely poor nation full of very oppressed people, whose life expectancy is 45.88 years. Women may not work or go to school. Homes containing women must paint the windows, lest some passing male spy them through the glass. In the first five months of this year, some 19,975 Afghans applied for asylum, making them the largest single group to do so. There have been three years of drought and, in spite of a government that harbors terrorists and commits flagrant human rights violations against its people, the United States has given Afghanistan $124 million in aid this year. A truly amazing fact that contributes to the terrible poverty of the Afghan people is that for the past decade Afghanistan was the world's leading exporter of opium--since 1999, they produced 75 percent of the opium in the world--but in July of 2000, the Taliban government decided that the growing of poppies for drugs is anti-Islamic. Within the course of a single year, in spite of famine, the production of poppies, which evidently do well under dry conditions, went to none-zero-zip. We've been spending billions on a futile War on Drugs; Afghanistan won theirs within a year with a simple edict, in spite of the fact that the people have nothing to grow and are starving. That's totalitarianism. Now, here is something I found very disturbing: On May 22, in response to additional aid sent by the Bush administration, Robert Scheer, columnist for the LA Times wrote: Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. If, like me, you are not a Bush supporter, you may be licking your chops, but wait. A report on MSNBC's website contained the statement: The international community has shunned Afghanistan's Islamic rulers over their human rights violations and their harboring of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile Washington blames for masterminding bombing attacks on U.S. interests. It also has remained silent about Afghanistan's drug ban, outraging the Taliban. The message here is clearly that U.S. foreign aid and the cessation of poppy growing have nothing to do with one another. I think this is something very important to understand as we draw our conclusions in all this. In this so-called Information Age, we can probably find a reliable source to support any position we happen to hold. If we want the truth, we have to be willing to dig for it. Everything is being spun so rapidly that we are all dizzy and don't even know it. We heard, for example, that some Palestinians cheered. That is true. But it doesn't stand alone as truth. Of Yasser Arafat, Reuters said, The president has discussed ways to work in order to build up a united Arab position that confirms that all Arab countries are ready to take part in an international coalition against terrorism. Arafat also gave blood for American victims. By focusing on one fact or another, our attitude and the decisions we support can be controlled without us even realizing it. There's one other thing no one is talking about in relation to the word responsibility. According to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian, as quoted by the BBC, Osama Bin Laden received his security training from our CIA. He left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in a jihad backed with American dollars. An August 24, l998 article posted on MSNBC's website went so far as to state: Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. "It was worth it," he said. Now, of course, Hatch didn't know bin Laden was going blow up the World Trade Center. At the time, bin Laden was being trained to use his terrorism against someone else. But, we can't just outlaw terrorism against ourselves and people we support. We have to take a strong stand against all terrorism, against all human rights violations. Because, as our own experience is showing us, pain leads to rage, which strikes out to create more pain in an endless cycle of suffering. We hear over and over that what happened on Tuesday was an assault on freedom. It absolutely was. But when Americans vicariously attack those in the Moslem community, they are also assaulting freedom. If we choose to remain a free people, we cannot afford to let our grief and anger at this horrendous, unthinkable attack turn us into that which attacked us. We need to demand justice; but indiscriminate retribution against civilians who had nothing to do with what happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania will undermine everything we hope to be. Thomas Jefferson said, A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. We cannot allow ourselves to be seduced into believing history is a simple interaction between good guys and bad guys. History is and always has been a very complex affair. We need to study it, to look at it from many perspectives. We need to learn from it. Then we need to turn to the God of our understanding and pray for wisdom as to how to change it. Some interesting links: Arabic Media Internet Network See what the Arabs are saying A very scary account of the Soviet's experience in their war with Afghanistan. Source: United States Army, Foreign Military Studies Office They Can't See Why They Are Hated. Source: British Publication The Guardian Waging Peace in a Terrorist Age. Source: AlterNet Website |
