[cryout-multi][cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/2″]
BS ‘n’ About…
September 11th
(written as our sons & daughters were on their way to Afghanistan)
The seeds for a very dark time are being planted all around us. The events of September 11th were heinous acts by desperate people. Most of us can’t begin to imagine the passions that could drive someone to do such a thing. As human beings we must all share the blame for not yet learning to communicate better. As individuals, we need to start getting involved again. As Americans, we need to better understand our place in the bigger picture.
This is a time of emotion, but we can’t let the red mask of rage cloud our clarity. For the crucible of history shows that it is days like September 11th which forge the future of our world, the very future of our species. A lot of statements are being made that will cost a lot of American blood to fulfill. So before we go storm trooping into an uncertain future, shouldn’t we, as citizens of a free country, ask some questions and reassess a few of the facts? …things we Americans don’t seem to do much of anymore. And shouldn’t we be asking ourselves, ‘What would the Good Guys do?’
The first significant act of terrorism on American soil was economic: A band of Patriots dressed up as Indians and dumped the King’s tea into Boston Harbor. These patriots were defending their homeland against an oppressor, right? And having no chance of winning ‘by the rules’, against the most powerful country in the world, these patriots hid behind trees, made up their own rules, and played to win.
Upon doing so they founded a country whose catchword was freedom, then marched to the Pacific, killing those ‘Indians’ who dared fight for their land, imprisoning the rest on reservations. They fought a cataclysmic war to earn the right of being the last civilized country to abolish slavery. They entered the 20th Century with children chained to the Industrial Age and women still unable to vote. They ushered in the Nuclear Age in the skies above Hiroshima while sitting in judgment on Nazis in Nuremberg.
So before we go draping ourselves in flags of righteous indignity, shouldn’t we at least try to understand why these people hate us so much? It is easy to paint them as ‘evildoers’, much harder to understand the passions which drive their fury.
America charged into the Middle East flush from our victories in WWII, looking for oil and playing Cold War power politics. The first we found and basically stole until the embargoes of the ‘70’s. The second we initiated with support for the annexation of the Palestinian homeland for creation of the new Jewish state of Israel, land that had been the Palestinians ten times longer than we’d existed as a nation. We supported the cruelly oppressive regime of the Shah of Iran until his people finally revolted. Then we threw our support behind Saddam Hussein. Yes, that Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan we supplied and trained the Afghans in their war against the Russians who, by the way, are now our friends.
Saddam attacks Kuwait and we organize a Western Capitalistic Crusade, arraying the forces of ‘good’ against the evil Saddam. Yet when the Balkans explode in state-sponsored genocide, we send in a few bombers. No oil there.
America has touched the lives of the common people in the Middle East in very personal, close-to-the-bone kinds of ways. Israel. The Shah. The Oil Companies. Saddam. The Gulf War. The Hostages. Like it or not, accurate or not, America is a symbol for tyranny throughout the region.
When every American knows someone tortured or killed for the cause, we might be a bit closer to an understanding. Kick us off our land and put us in tents in the Arizona desert and we’d be getting closer still. Pack all the pain and suffering from the above into one lifetime, and we’d be getting real close.
We are entering a war we can’t possibly win. …unless we’re willing to commit genocide. The hatreds arrayed against us, some born of legitimate grievance, fueled by a religious fervor we can’t begin to understand, won’t go away if we kill the fathers. Ask Israel. Inside the chests of these terrorists beat the hearts of patriots, fighting for their homeland against an across-the-ocean oppressor, changing the rules because it is the only way they can win. Sound familiar?
These folks are willing to die for what they believe. Terrorists don’t ‘hate freedom’. They have no designs to conquer or convert America. They’re not doing this to see themselves on CNN. They want our attention. They have some serious grievances that are not being addressed by the international community, some thousands of years old. Their passions lie with their homeland, not ours. If we weren’t there, they wouldn’t be here!
We’re about to enter a war we can’t possibly win. …not unless we’re willing to lose much of what IS America. Turn into a police state with a Maginot Line around every airport, and we lose. Be afraid to get on a bus, afraid of the person in the next seat, and we lose. Kill one innocent child, and we lose.
Even if victory were possible, will it have been worth the price? We are still innocent. September 11th made for good TV, but it still happened more ‘there’ than ‘here’. We don’t yet live in fear. We don’t see dead people littering our streets. We don’t hate yet. Meanwhile our sons and daughters are cruising halfway around the world toward an eye-for-an-eye Biblical Armageddon with the Koran thrown in.
We are about to enter a war we can’t possibly win. …unless we become what we profess to fight. How many of our basic freedoms will we sacrifice along the way? How many more seeds of hatred will be sown? How many fingers will point inward when the blame starts getting passed around? Will our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, even our patriotic songs, have any meaning left? Will we have made the world free-er?
I don’t want to be the American I’m going to have to become to win this one. The minute I start living in fear and suspicion, everything America stood for will be gone. When I eagerly give away my civil liberties for protection from the ‘bad guys’, I’ll be one step closer to Big Brother. If I allow the trampling of the Constitution, I will have disgraced September 11th by turning it into just another Reichstag fire.
For a country that sure knows how to throw the freedom word around, we don’t export any of it and seem to do our best to stamp it out wherever it appears. A Haitian friend once said, “You are either for the people, or against the people”. Diem, Marcos, and Noriega. The Shah, Saddam, and Allende. Our friends. Ouch! For a long time we haven’t been doing what the Good Guys would do: “Bin Laden. Dead or Alive!” Where do lynch mobs fit into our Constitution?
America, since the fall of the Soviet Empire, has had an unprecedented opportunity to shape the entire future of our species. The world looks to us for leadership. Let’s not lead it into the past.
…..
Let September 11th be an end to the killing,
not just another beginning,
the Memorial one of peace, not death.
- [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [/cryout-multi]