Can't Help It...

Posted by parhad on September 11, 2001 at 22:15:23:

Listening all day to the grief, sorrow, confusion and outrage of Americans I can't help but contrast this with the calm and cool acceptance this nation and our own people have shown for the devastation, the death, the misery, the loss, the blighted future, the poisoned air and water which have been showered on the people, the children, the parents and brothers, sisters, grandparents of Iraq for the last 12 years without so much as a "gee, how ya doin".

Are we really to accept the subtext in all this shock and outrage that somehow American lives and ruined buildings and terror stricken orphans are more important...matter much more, are any more innocent, than the descendents of our own people and others? Why...what makes that so?

Why is it so difficult to grasp that desperate people with no hope in sight turn to the most savage and destructive methods at hand. Wasn't George Washington driven to desperation by England's refusal to grant him and his fellow Englishmen a voice in government? Don't we all accept the simple truth that desperate people do desperate things?

How simple, how utterly low-tech...how unstoppable by any missle defense system, though the dummies will rush to build one...even as they retaliate and produce another crop of dedicateed terrorists. They didn't use any bombs...they turned a passenger plane INTO a bomb. Pretty damn ingenuous, also a hint that sophistication or the lack of it is no deterrent to human ingenuity.

Now before someone tells me to move to Pakistan...I am not condoning the murder of ANY innocent people, I don't care where they live, Iraq or New York. But if you truly want these things stopped, this is not the way to go about it. The United States now wants to spend zillions on "intelligence"...that's code for wreck the Constitution, as many right-wingers and a lot of our people are eager to do. The United States had no clue that the Soviet Union was falling apart, no hint the Berlin Wall was coming down, as they've been clueless in many other instances...but they had to say something so they want us all to rest easy with the idea that agents will be climbing down our shorts in an effort to "protect us". The idea that you can "police" people and terrorize your own citizens for their own "protection" will fail utterly...Facist governments don't last...they can't...they have the seeds of their own destruction built into the malaise and fear they plant in their own communities.

Play the tape back to the moment the Israelis expanded the number of illegal settlements...play it back farther to the rise of Nazi Germany when people thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to attack the Bolsheviks and get rid of the Jews, and wasn't it good of Hitler to offer to do both...play the tape forward to the decision to grind Iraq into dust, slowly crushing the people...play back to the Palestinian refugee camps allowed to fester and spawn discontent and fearlessness mingled with hopelessness...at the Arab world's decision to leave them there as a "reminder"...yes that old "WE WILL NEVER FORGET"...you''ve heard before...when they could easily have absorbed them, never thinking the day might come they would regret such grandtsanding in the practical aftermath and chaos of war and retaliation and terror and more retaliation.

It will not end until people agree to cherish their lives more than losses...till the day they put aside their martyred murdered in favor of their living children huddled at their feet in fear and confusion.

If I've had to forget about the 500,000 Iraqi and Assyrian children killed in 12 years, I already forgot about the few thousand killed today...that's how these things brutalize all of us. No one wins these things any more...we all lose.

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: Listening all day to the grief, sorrow, confusion and outrage of Americans I can't help but contrast this with the calm and cool acceptance this nation and our own people have shown for the devastation, the death, the misery, the loss, the blighted future, the poisoned air and water which have been showered on the people, the children, the parents and brothers, sisters, grandparents of Iraq for the last 12 years without so much as a "gee, how ya doin". : Are we really to accept the subtext in all this shock and outrage that somehow American lives and ruined buildings and terror stricken orphans are more important...matter much more, are any more innocent, than the descendents of our own people and others? Why...what makes that so? : Why is it so difficult to grasp that desperate people with no hope in sight turn to the most savage and destructive methods at hand. Wasn't George Washington driven to desperation by England's refusal to grant him and his fellow Englishmen a voice in government? Don't we all accept the simple truth that desperate people do desperate things? : How simple, how utterly low-tech...how unstoppable by any missle defense system, though the dummies will rush to build one...even as they retaliate and produce another crop of dedicateed terrorists. They didn't use any bombs...they turned a passenger plane INTO a bomb. Pretty damn ingenuous, also a hint that sophistication or the lack of it is no deterrent to human ingenuity. : Now before someone tells me to move to Pakistan...I am not condoning the murder of ANY innocent people, I don't care where they live, Iraq or New York. But if you truly want these things stopped, this is not the way to go about it. The United States now wants to spend zillions on "intelligence"...that's code for wreck the Constitution, as many right-wingers and a lot of our people are eager to do. The United States had no clue that the Soviet Union was falling apart, no hint the Berlin Wall was coming down, as they've been clueless in many other instances...but they had to say something so they want us all to rest easy with the idea that agents will be climbing down our shorts in an effort to "protect us". The idea that you can "police" people and terrorize your own citizens for their own "protection" will fail utterly...Facist governments don't last...they can't...they have the seeds of their own destruction built into the malaise and fear they plant in their own communities. : Play the tape back to the moment the Israelis expanded the number of illegal settlements...play it back farther to the rise of Nazi Germany when people thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to attack the Bolsheviks and get rid of the Jews, and wasn't it good of Hitler to offer to do both...play the tape forward to the decision to grind Iraq into dust, slowly crushing the people...play back to the Palestinian refugee camps allowed to fester and spawn discontent and fearlessness mingled with hopelessness...at the Arab world's decision to leave them there as a "reminder"...yes that old "WE WILL NEVER FORGET"...you''ve heard before...when they could easily have absorbed them, never thinking the day might come they would regret such grandtsanding in the practical aftermath and chaos of war and retaliation and terror and more retaliation. : It will not end until people agree to cherish their lives more than losses...till the day they put aside their martyred murdered in favor of their living children huddled at their feet in fear and confusion. : If I've had to forget about the 500,000 Iraqi and Assyrian children killed in 12 years, I already forgot about the few thousand killed today...that's how these things brutalize all of us. No one wins these things any more...we all lose.

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