Dear Rachel,
I have not heard contempt on this list, and am sorry that you have. I'm
sure many people on this list have connections to people at or near
Ground Zero (I have). And I have had friends shed their blood and lose
their lives in other circumstances for the cause of peace. If proximity
to blood loss is the measure of authority to speak I imagine there are
many on this list so authorized.
I can't imagine anyone on this list voicing contempt for lost U.S.
lives.
If trying to understand the humanity of people on all sides of this
thing (not the direct perpetrators, but Muslims, Middle Easterners, Arab
Americans, Jews, U.S. citizens, etc. generally) is taken as a form of
contempt for U.S. lives I'm not sure what hope we have for connecting to
humanity in a deeper sense and in a way that promotes peace and an end
to terrorism (of all forms).
The loss of the 5,000 is HORRIFIC; I have not heard anyone utter
otherwise. I don't think, as you say, the civilians themselves were the
target so much as part of the intended effect of terror; I think that
the targets were these incredible symbolic towers of corporate
capitalism and world finance with the knowledge that the message would
be driven home by the lives taken in the process. Murder was clearly at
the heart of it, but it does bear similarities to our own "collateral
damage" when we have chosen to "take out" strategic or symbolic sites in
other contexts knowing that we must murder to dissect. Acknowledging
that does not, I think, negate the horror and the condemnation that must
be made of the carnage.
I agree that we cannot assume in searching for the humanity in this that
all sides are equal and that there may not be real "evil" to be reckoned
with (certainly there was in Nazi Germany, imho). But as has been
stated Palestinians have picked through rubble to draw their dead from
buildings destroyed by American F-16 fighter jets (your own question
applies, isn't there blood as red? I think the answer all around is
that everybody's blood is red); some Jews have had to survive by
becoming the handlers of dead bodies in concentration camps and many,
many civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world die
from the effects of specific political embargoes on their countries or
from the pursuit of global and local policies that render them hungry,
without viable economies and with no infrastructure or healthcare.
Some of us see this as a wake up call to start connecting the dots of
all of these instances of carnage and inhumanity. To think about the
actions that address the current situation and are aligned with larger,
wider spread solutions.
Just my thoughts and feelings. I feel sure, Rachel, that no one on this
list feels anything but deep sadness at what has happened and feels a
desire for a justice as deep and passionately felt and experienced as
this pain is now.
In Peace,
K.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:16 PDT