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September
15, 2001
Our Blunted Humanity
by Claire Mortimer
The images of trauma have taken me back
to similar destruction and death that I witnessed first-hand
in Central America in the eighties.
I am also reminded of the crash
of Swissair Flight 111 three years ago that killed my parents.
I know what it feels like to intellectually know that someone
you love is dead, but experience the emotional torture of waiting
for weeks for the first pieces of their pulverized bodies to
be identified, then plunge into wrenching delayed grief. My
heart goes out to all those poor souls who are waiting in horror
for word of their missing loved ones.
Although I am saddened deeply
by the events of September 11, I am not surprised.
The US government, and it's
corporate backers, have been the biggest perpetrators of terrorism
causing death and suffering to hundreds of thousands of people
all over the planet for several decades. These atrocities were
funded with our tax dollars.
The media is also complicit.
Why have we not seen images of bombed hospitals in Bagdad?
Peasants tortured and killed in front of their families in Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti, El Salvador, Sudan? Mothers watching
helplessly while their children die from lack of medicine in
Cuba and Iraq due to US-backed embargoes? Why don't we see
interviews with those mothers so we can feel their anguish?
Let us vow not to allow our
compassion for any of our brothers or sisters to be extinguished
or reawakened at the whim of media manipulation.
We have to dig deeper, and
ask ourselves harder questions.
Why would people feel such
hatred toward our government and our economic institutions to
carry out these suicidal acts of mass destruction?
How are the deaths of thousands
of office workers any different from "collateral damage"
in bombings of Iraq or Viet Nam?
How have we allowed ourselves
to accept the sanitized versions of US-sponsored terrorism, both
military and economic, portrayed in the media?
Why is it acceptable for the
media to report how many Americans die in accidents abroad?
Or for us to sigh in relief when no Americans are on the victim
list in such accidents?
So much human suffering has
been hidden from our consciousness for so long.
We have allowed our humanity
to be blunted and selective.
Tragically, we are now getting
a little taste of how our government has been treating certain
peoples of the world for decades.
We are reaping what we have
sown, knowingly or not. With or without our consent.
So what, aside from horror,
will our response be?
Will we allow our neighbors
and government to lash out blindly at ethnic groups who happen
to share the same genetic pool or religious beliefs as the hijackers?
Will we feel justified declaring
war and unleashing the full military power we possess on all
suspected collaborators?
Will we feel indifference to
the mangled bodies of the "collateral damage to non-military
targets" when we move in that direction?
In other words: Will we participate
in the perpetuation and amplification of the inhumanity, national
supremacy, and racism which are at the source of these terrible
acts?
Make no mistake about it:
These were horrible acts which I deplore. I pray for the souls
of those who have passed over, and I pray for their loved ones
in mourning. But this is not the first time in modern history
that massive terrorism has killed thousands of people. The majority
of times, and the vast majority of casualties, have been caused
by, or paid for by the US government.
The challenge before us is
to rise above misguided jingoistic patriotism.
Instead, we must pray for and
work for a major shift in American consciousness.
Please join me in praying that
hatred, revenge, and war-mongering are replaced with compassion,
understanding, forgiveness, and Peace. CP
Claire Mortimer lives in Kilauea, Hawaii
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