[Powderworks] Re: These should not be forgotten years
(NMOC)
Kate Adams
kate@dnki.net
Thu, 12 Sep 2002 12:51:05 -0400
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Tribe and Tony and all others too,
It is far too easy to sit offshore and smirk at us silly Americans for
being upset a whole year later about this. It is much too easy to trot out
a whole catalog of "bigger" tragedies to buttress sneering slights. It is
also too easy to make it into a broad scale act of war by some
entity-to-be-defined, when it was simply a mass-murder of civilians by
terrorists. (btw, most casualties at Pearl Harbor were on warships or at
the base, not civilians. There are still mortar rounds buried in the back
wall of the hangars at Hickam AFB and unrepaired stucco on the barracks).
Fact is, if you and stood mute and helpless as you witnessed this with your
coworkers, if you were called in to calm and console a hysterical
administrator with five close relatives in those buildings, if your friends
lost brothers, if your kid's friends lost fathers, if your relatives lost
good friends, ... or if you lost someone close to you then it is one of the
biggest and nastiest things to ever happen no matter what anyone says. I
don't live in NYC, but I have travelled there, walked that observation
deck, slept in that downed hotel on the site, parked my car in that garage,
swam in the rooftop pool at that former hotel. If it were May 25 and not
September 11, it could have been me and my brother jumping off together,
hopelessly trapped. Or not, if we had stopped for coffee first.
And it would have been much worse had a nuclear plant been hit and
collapsed, rendering all land in a 35-50 mile radius uninhabitable. Or a
chemical factory in densely populated New Jersey, or any number of far
dirtier and less symbolic targets. The potential to use an airplane for a
weapon of mass destruction is what scares the hell out of me.
I'm getting really tired of both ends of this ... the "not such a big deal"
auto-sneering at Americans and the "its an act of war" end of it by
Americans. It is a very big deal to so many of us on this list simply
because it is a very personal tragedy for many of us. This wasn't
armchair TV consumption of far-off atrocity. We simply cannot give it a
comparative historical tragedy rating on the horrendous atrocity scale with
decades of perspective. This was real-life consumption of our friends and
families and that is what makes it loom so huge in our lives.
We Americans do now need to cool our heads and get perspective and push for
rational policy in the wake of September 11, 2001, yet all the derisive and
detached minimization by those far removed from all of it ain't gonna make
that happen. All the exhortations to compare it to "much greater evils"
doesn't help if you bore personal witness to one and not the other. For
our part we Americans need to call it what it is - a mass-murder by former
CIA darlings - and own up to the fact that US actions in the world create
the conditions which breed and nurture this evil and work to bring on the
changes that keep it from happening anew in another twenty years. (a very
good column in the Boston Globe spells the need to join the world rather
tactfully:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/254/oped/A_nation_changed_and_unchanged+.shtml).
As the bumper sticker goes... if you want peace, work for justice. But
forgive us if we lack perspective when we and our friends and family are
grieving.
-Kate
At 09:37 PM 9/12/02 +1000, Tribe Goddard wrote:
>Hiroshima.
>
>I'm aware that terrible cataclysms, committed by human hands, have
>occurred in other places and times. But never quite like this, I don't think.
*******************************************************
Kate Adams
Gradual Student
UMass Lowell
*******************************************************
Remember your childhood
Remember the journey
Hope is what you say and do
-Midnight Oil
(Minutes to Midnight)
*******************************************************
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Tribe and Tony and all others too,<br>
<br>
It is far too easy to sit offshore and smirk at us silly Americans for
being upset a whole year later about this. It is much too easy to
trot out a whole catalog of "bigger" tragedies to buttress
sneering slights. It is also too easy to make it into a broad scale
act of war by some entity-to-be-defined, when it was simply a mass-murder
of civilians by terrorists. (btw, most casualties at Pearl Harbor were on
warships or at the base, not civilians. There are still mortar
rounds buried in the back wall of the hangars at Hickam AFB and
unrepaired stucco on the barracks).<br>
<br>
Fact is, if you and stood mute and helpless as you witnessed this with
your coworkers, if you were called in to calm and console a hysterical
administrator with five close relatives in those buildings, if your
friends lost brothers, if your kid's friends lost fathers, if your
relatives lost good friends, ... or if you lost someone close to you then
it is one of the biggest and nastiest things to ever happen no matter
what anyone says. I don't live in NYC, but I have travelled there,
walked that observation deck, slept in that downed hotel on the site,
parked my car in that garage, swam in the rooftop pool at that former
hotel. If it were May 25 and not September 11, it could have been
me and my brother jumping off together, hopelessly trapped. Or not,
if we had stopped for coffee first.<br>
<br>
And it would have been much worse had a nuclear plant been hit and
collapsed, rendering all land in a 35-50 mile radius uninhabitable.
Or a chemical factory in densely populated New Jersey, or any number of
far dirtier and less symbolic targets. The potential to use an
airplane for a weapon of mass destruction is what scares the hell out of
me. <br>
<br>
I'm getting really tired of both ends of this ... the "not such a
big deal" auto-sneering at Americans and the "its an act of
war" end of it by Americans. It is a very big deal to so many
of us on this list simply because it is a very personal tragedy for many
of us. This wasn't armchair TV consumption of far-off
atrocity. We simply cannot give it a comparative historical tragedy
rating on the horrendous atrocity scale with decades of
perspective. This was real-life consumption of our friends and
families and that is what makes it loom so huge in our lives.
<br>
<br>
We Americans do now need to cool our heads and get perspective and push
for rational policy in the wake of September 11, 2001, yet all the
derisive and detached minimization by those far removed from all of it
ain't gonna make that happen. All the exhortations to compare it to
"much greater evils" doesn't help if you bore personal witness
to one and not the other. For our part we Americans need to call it
what it is - a mass-murder by former CIA darlings - and own up to the
fact that US actions in the world create the conditions which breed and
nurture this evil and work to bring on the changes that keep it from
happening anew in another twenty years. (a very good column in the
Boston Globe spells the need to join the world rather tactfully:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/254/oped/A_nation_changed_and_unchanged+.shtml).
<br>
<br>
As the bumper sticker goes... if you want peace, work for justice.
But forgive us if we lack perspective when we and our friends and family
are grieving.<br>
<br>
-Kate<br>
<br>
At 09:37 PM 9/12/02 +1000, Tribe Goddard wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite><font face="arial" size=2>Hiroshima.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="arial" size=2>I'm aware that terrible cataclysms, committed
by human hands, have occurred in other places and times. But never quite
like this, I don't think.</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
*******************************************************<br>
Kate Adams<br>
Gradual Student<br>
UMass Lowell<br>
*******************************************************<br>
Remember your childhood<br>
Remember the journey<br>
Hope is what you say and do<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>-Midnight
Oil <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>(Minutes
to Midnight)<br>
*******************************************************<br>
</font></html>
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