Re: War on Terror

[jeffnpat <jeffnpat@nis.net>]

Dear Sinclair Discussion Group:

I work two miles from "ground zero," as it's become known.  I spent the night
of 9/11 on a couch in the reception area of my office building, and headed home
the next day in a city (and a world) much changed.  I have seen many photos,
but none has affected me as much as the one showing people standing in the
windows of the uppermost floors of a tower that was burning below them.  I
could not see their features, or even if they were men or women, but I could
feel at least some of the abject terror they must have felt.  Many of them
jumped rather than face the inevitable agony of burning or suffocation.  A few
of the leaps were captured on video, and the recorded interviews of some who
watched were narratives of the sort that were difficult to listen to.  There
were reports of people jumping in groups, hand in hand.  One person interviewed
said he saw five.  Hard as that is to envisage, there is a glimmer of hope in
it.  When I find myself blinking back tears thinking about the deaths of so
many, and the ongoing pain of the many more who lost their loved ones on that
day, I think about the people who jumped hand in hand.  I can't believe they
stopped to consider who they were holding hands with.  I can't believe they
looked around for fellow Catholics, Protestants, or Muslims, or looked for
people with a similar skin tone, or a sexual persuasion, similar to their own.
These were people  united by a common denominator--imminent death.  There is
another common denominator that common ordinary people, all over the world,
might consider now, while there's still time -- life, beside which all else
pales, no matter what god, if any, you pray to.  On Monday I will go to work,
as will many of you.  All over the world, in those "other" countries, the
majority just want to tend their flocks, sell their crops, and pay their bills,
just like us.  It is their leaders who make them swallow the party line.
History has shown that we are not all so different as we are persuaded to
believe.  The "evil" we are experiencing today is only the CURRENT evil.  Just
look back a few decades.  Their surnames may have been different, but their
evil was the same.

Jeff Nisbet


Neil Sinclair wrote:

> Adding to the above thread; this line of thinking raises a particular
> conundrum when war and politics overlap. Indeed was it the Reuters editor
> that wanted to drop the word terrorist from the reporting out of the fear
> that one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?.  But to add one
> small candle of clarity to what Sinclair and Bruce have articulated, I sense
> the world is about to clomp down heavily on any group that uses civilian
> targets for fear and violence. That will have political repercussions all
> over but this is my sense of where this war on terror is evolving. Just one
> more perspective. I also ask the list whether others agree that the root of
> terrorr is not politics so much as total ignorance combined with a degree of
> evil that lacks any empathetic caring.
>

[ Excess quotations omitted. ]


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