Dear friends,
Thank you diana for your post and for a healthy reminder that I can't
really speak for how others on the list feel (I know that was not a main
point and was done gently ;-)). Perhaps I should have said "that I hope
and have a strong belief that..." Also, thanks for your affirmations
and extensions of my comments with your emphasis on a desire to
understand.
And thanks Renee for highlighting that every "rational" or analytic
discussion takes place with a backdrop of personal and social messiness
and emotion, so that, as you say, the "benefit of the doubt" helps a lot
in keeping us attuned to fulsome dialogue in arriving at appropriate
personal and/or collective actions.
And thanks Karen for challenging and prodding and putting forth
articulate emotion along with analyis and insight. It feels helpful,
imho, to publicly and explicitly own the emotion(s) that inform our
responses even if for some of us the "object" is understanding and
action (as Renee asked how do we keep lapsing into the duality of
"rationality" and "emotion;" on *this* list of all places ;-)).
Personally, I'm not sure if I feel killing in self-defense is
"justified" so much as necessary and a "natural" (instinctual?) survival
response (it seems *beyond/aside from justification*, an ajustified
necessity(?)); I just don't want killing in defense of future lives to
become confused with killing only in revenge for lives already lost.
You raise good points about "terrorism" internationally. Many (on other
lists if not here) have questioned the realism of stamping out terrorism
only by hunting down and eliminating terrorists (imho, there is still
something to be said about understanding and addressing the conditions
out of which "terrorists" arise). No?
As for the "new War" I'd like to place some votes for reviving the War
on poverty along with a War on ignorance of who would harm us and why, a
War on ignorance of whom we (including by U.S. govt actions) harm and
why, a War on racism and other isms of oppression and a War on
violence. These would be "new." Your clarities Rachel that we are "at
War" is an important one; I have to agree pragmatically. "We" will
respond militarily undoubtedly and need to contribute to a dialogue
about how that should happen to achieve the most just outcomes, whether
or not our actions are justifiable, unjustifiable or ajustifiable (as I
mentioned above).
Again, thanks (everyone) for the dialogue.
In Peace,
K.
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