>Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 18:04:34 -0700 (PDT)
> "w. everett chesnut, ph.d." <[log in to unmask]>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
> Tuesday, tragedies, terrorism
>I have received so many forwards about Tuesday's horror;
>here, then, is a forward with which I can fully agree in
>both my grief and my hope.
>
>If you've already had a bellyful about the Tuesday tragedy,
>feel free to ignore this.  If you disagree with it, feel
>free to discard it.  If you agree with it, you might want
>to pass it along.
>
>Yours,
>  Ev
>===============================================================
>>
>>      At the university, I was on my way to work when I
>> first learned about the horror that had occurred on
>> Tuesday.  Like so many others, I was devastated by the
>> news.  Here at the University of Oklahoma, the World
>> Trade Center tragedy not only horrified us but rekindled
>> nightmares about the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah
>> building.  Students gathered in the campus Student Union
>> building to learn what we could from the television
>> newsreports.
>>      For the past several days, I have needed to be
>> around people, to meditate, to observe in some hopes of
>> deriving some small explicability from all this.  So I've
>> listened to my fellow students.  I've watched CNN, CSPAN,
>> all four network channels.  I've read reactions in print
>> newspapers and internet newsgroups.  I've talked with
>> friends and exchanged e-mails.  And I've tried to grapple
>> with the horror, the incomprehensible loss, and the
>> social changes I can already sense developing.
>>      Tuesday's tragedy cost us perhaps thousands of lives
>> viciously, absurdly ended.  It cost us our sense of
>> national safety in one of our greatest cities and in our
>> safest means of national and international travel.  And,
>> after observing people's reactions these past several
>> days, it looks as though we as a country may have lost
>> far more on Tuesday.
>>      In newsgroups and e-mails, in conversations over-
>> heard, I keep encountering the ugly words of racism.
>> More than once, someone has stated that s/he really
>> didn't care whether anyone in the Middle East were
>> responsible for Tuesday's tragedy -- we should bomb the
>> Middle East into oblivion anyway.  I remember that, when
>> people had suspected Middle East terrorists of bombing
>> the Murrah building here in Oklahoma, a Philipino friend
>> of mine had been assaulted by angry White students who'd
>> assumed he were from the Middle East simply because he
>> had darker skin.  In my history books, I've read what
>> our nation did to United States citizens who happened
>> to be of Asian descent during World War II; I remember
>> from my childhood how people treated United States
>> citizens and foreign students of Middle Eastern descent
>> during the Iran Hostage Crisis and again during Desert
>> Storm.  I can still recall witnessing men in Ku Klux Klan
>> robes on the roadside waving signs advocating hatred for
>> everyone associated with the Middle East.  I remember
>> the ugly sounds in their voices, and I'm hearing that
>> same ugliness in the voices of too many of my fellow
>> Americans today.
>>      In print and in person, I keep encountering people
>> who now react with crazed fear against anything which is
>> not silenced obedience to the government.  They are
>> convinced that unity in the face of this tragedy means
>> that we must now surrender on all social and political
>> issues to the current executive branch.  Why is it that
>> so many people who shout that we must unite really mean
>> that we must unite under their specific beliefs and must
>> abandon our own?  How can they exploit a tragedy like
>> this into a political ploy?  Any disagreement with Bush
>> on budget matters, on social security or school prayer
>> or on any number of important political disputes, is
>> reinterpreted by these people as a dangerous show of
>> disunity.  I read and hear comments such as "at this
>> point the differences between political dogma become
>> moot -- we have a job to do" and other comments which
>> vilify any and all disagreements with the current
>> president, with the implication that such wrongthink
>> borders on being traitorous.  But what good is it to
>> safeguard our country if we do so by casting aside the
>> very freedom and open debate that have made our country
>> worth celebrating?
>>      We need to rally together to keep Tuesday's tragedy
>> from being repeated, but we dare not turn this into a
>> politician's carte blanche for stifling debate about
>> critical issues and critical disagreements between
>> liberals and conservatives.  Unity does not mean
>> whitewashing.  I understand that it is very easy and
>> very human to lionize any source of strength into a hero.
>> Abused children still cling to the violent parent for
>> protection from strangers and snarling dogs.  If the
>> white knight promises to slay the dragon, who dares
>> upbraid him when he robs from some unarmed citizens?
>> But the abusive parent must still be held to account, and
>> dragonslaying does not make a saint of a robber.  We must
>> take action against terrorism, oh yes, but we must also
>> continue to work to keep our government honest, fair, and
>> responsive to both liberals and conservatives, and that
>> is not possible when people are silenced in the name of
>> unity.  Or we may end up allowing the passage of laws
>> that will haunt our grandchildren long after Tuesday's
>> tragedy has become a never-repeated event alive only in
>> dusty history books.
>>      Finally, I am frightened for the spiritual fidelity
>> of Christians of many denominations.  Before Tuesday, I
>> heard people advocating being more like Jesus Christ in
>> His compassion and submission.  Local and national
>> newspapers featured others boasting annoyingly about
>> their Christianity as part of their lobbying for school
>> prayer or such.  After Tuesday, I hear torrents of words
>> of un-Christian hatred from people who claim to be
>> Christians.  I read boasts that whoever did this will
>> be "hunted down and destroyed without thought for the
>> sanctity of human life."  Yes, Jesus scourged the
>> moneychangers in the temple, and while He advocated we
>> pray for those who persecute us, He also spoke about
>> bringing a sword.  But always at such times He was angry
>> not hate-filled, and although He fought back on certain
>> occasions, He never indulged in viciousness and blind
>> rage.  In responding to this act of terrorism, we must
>> not become like the terrorists: we must not become as
>> hate-filled, as dismissive of human life, as willing
>> to harm innocents as those we oppose.  Those of us who
>> claim to be Christians will be judged on whether we
>> remain true to our Christianity when such horrors tempt
>> us to cast aside our faith in the name of rage and
>> revenge.
>>      I am sick to my stomach about a large segment of my
>> country.  The terrorists attacked us, but our reactionary
>> response is damaging us far, far worse.  Long before
>> flies had begun to feast upon the dead, our politicians
>> were feasting upon the opportunities provided by this
>> attack to silence questions about some questionable
>> political policies.  I have been told that here, in
>> Oklahoma, the first show of unity was the gasoline
>> stations uniting to charge $5.00 a gallon for gas.
>> United States citizens of Arabic descent worry for their
>> safety, and United States mosques suffer bomb threats
>> which amount to domestic acts of retributive terrorism
>> against innocent United States Islamic citizens and
>> their houses of God.  Meanwhile, too many Christian
>> evangelists and politicians use this tragedy like a
>> marketing tool, offering to the grieving not comfort nor
>> wisdom but only a sales pitch for their particular
>> religion.
>>      Tuesday's tragedy must not occur again.  But let's
>> make sure that we fight _all_ forms of terrorism and
>> oppose _all_ bloodshed of innocents, including the
>> innocent deaths which occur whenever we give in to the
>> impulse to blind retaliation.  Let's make sure that we
>> neither contribute to nor worsen the horrors of Tuesday
>> 11 September 2001 with the way we in the United States
>> respond, individually and as a people.
>>
>
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"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being."
(Albert Camus)

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