I was a senior in college when Challenger exploded, killing all hands and bringing the U.S. space program to its knees. I remember where I was when it happened, and who I was with. I remember unutterable feelings of sadness and grief, I remember friends crying, I remember sitting all day in front of our small TV in our apartment, hoping for news, hoping for survivors, hoping for anything that would make it a little less hopeless. I remember thinking at the time that this was one of those moments like when JFK was shot; something I’d remember forever and that would be the national moment of tragedy and loss in my lifetime.
Years later, I was a young father and owner of a small business with a fresh new Master’s degree when Janet Reno sent in the troop and David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas went up in flames. I remember where I was when it happened, and who I was with. I remember thinking how insane the whole thing was, how utterly incomprehensible it was to me that this was happening in the U.S. I remember my grief at all the lives lost, particularly those of the children, who had no real freedom to chose either the manner of their lives or their deaths in their all too brief existence. I remember sitting all day in front of the TV in our house, hoping for survivors, hoping for anything that would make it a little less hopeless. I remember thinking that this was something I’d remember for the rest of my life, and that this was something that had changed America.
I was on a plane to Houston, Texas to do some consulting when I first heard the news about the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I remember clustering around TVs in airport bars with other travelers as the news came in, shocked and dismayed by the carnage. I spent that night alone in a hotel room, literally right next door to the Federal Building in Houston. I called my wife to tell her I was alright, and watched TV until all hours of the night. The windows in my hotel room faced the Federal Building; I spent the night wondering if I was going to have to try and dodge flying glass while I tried to sleep with the flashing of police cruiser lights bathing the room in an alternating red and blue glow. This, I thought, is it. This is the event that will be like Pearl Harbor and JFK. I will never forget this. I remember feeling like I’d been gut punched when I heard about the casualties. I remember wanting to throw up at the thought that some maniac cared so little for human life that he’d donate a truck bomb not just into a building full of people, but right outside of a day care center full of kids. Only months before, my own children had been trapped at a day care center less than two blocks from a huge gas main explosion, and I couldn’t imagine the grief and horror these poor parents and children in Oklahoma City must be experiencing. I remember hoping they would find more alive in the rubble, hoping that something would happen to make it less terrible than it surely seemed to be. I remember my incomprehension at the horrible toll of 268 lives so quickly snuffed out.
I remember my smoldering anger at those people who somehow seemed to blame the victims. Sure, it’s horrible, but what can you expect? Look at what the government has done to make people hat it so much! Those voices were in the minority, though. Those voices could easily be ascribed to cranks, attention seekers, and the emotionally bankrupt. They were not people I respected and trusted.
All through the day yesterday, I found myself turning to the people’s individual web pages for news, information, and eyewitness accounts. The power of the individual web author was so obvious yesterday; so valuable when the corporate media sites crumpled under the assault of tens of millions of viewers and the TV news struggled in the information vacuum of the hours after the attack. The coverage on Slashdot, with hundreds of people posting their news, personal accounts, and viewpoints far exceeded the quality and usefulness of anything from CNN or any of its compatriots. Scripting News, kotte and others provided useful links, relevant commentary, and broke news sometimes before it was even available on TV. Reading the comments of people like Hal and Alwin was at least as important to me as discussing the situation with my colleagues and co-workers. The decentralized, networked nature of the individual web logging community was a triumph yesterday.
Again, I watched the TV all day, hoping. The grief, sadness, anger and confusion I’d felt in all of the incidents I mentioned above paled before the feelings yesterday. I still have no real way of expressing my horror. I am still shocked and stunned. I can at least be comforted that none of my family (some of whom are in Washington), none of my colleagues (some of whom were flying yesterday), and no one I know directly was hurt or killed. I am grateful for that.
The time for reflection has begun. Like so many, many others, I’m plagued by the twin questions of Why? and What now?
Like others, I’ve turned to the community of web loggers to read what others are feeling and thinking, in an effort to clarify my own thoughts. I’m deeply troubled by much of what I read.
I am repulsed and sickened by the hatred and bigotry I’m finding. I can understand some people reacting that way; it is human to lash out when hurt and the people of the world have been very deeply hurt by the events of the last day. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t feel some of it myself. These are my people being killed, being hurt, being threatened. That could be my wife on the cell phone telling me her plane had been hijacked. That could be my daughter leaping from the 80th story of a burning building to avoid being burned to death. That anger, even that flash of hatred, while repugnant is a part of being human. We hurt, we fear, we strike out. We want to be protected, we want the other, the different, particularly when it can be associated with what caused the pain and the fear, to be gone, to be destroyed, so we can feel safe again. It is part of the grieving, and many of us are going to feel it and struggle with it.
What isn’t natural or responsible is using a public forum to not only trumpet that anger and hatred to the world, but to urge action based on it. Doing that, and even worse, carry through on that action, is inhuman. These are the actions of the terrorists. These are the actions that and feelings that lead to Manzanar, and Bergen-Belsen, and the Killing Fields. I am repelled, not that people are angry, but that some few people have chosen this opportunity to uncover and voice their prejudices and hatreds, to wave the bloody shirt and use yesterday’s atrocities to justify their own demons. This is not about your inability to grow up and join the human race. This event was not tailor made as an excuse for you to indulge your own pettiness, your own intellectual laziness in resolving your own internal contradictions, your own desire to feel superior by demeaning and vilifying whole groups of people.
Yes, the independent web author and commentator showed the power of this medium yesterday. We, individually and collectively, showed we have power. Along with power, however, comes responsibility. Feeling anger after this sort of tragedy is natural. Proclaiming it to the world is irresponsible. Having a flash of hatred out of fear and pain is natural. Expressing it to a global audience, urging them to irrational action, is irresponsible. Calls to deport, imprison, kill, “nuke”, or torture an entire group of people, simply to alleviate your own unfounded fears, is the height of irresponsibility. When you write on the web, anyone from anywhere in the world can read what you write, and just may. You assume a burden and a responsibility which, while admittedly not as heavy as that of the formal journalist, is there nonetheless. This is not censorship, this is being adult. Freedom of speech carries with it the responsibility not to incite madness, hatred, and irrationality.
If you were one of the people who wrote hateful, bigoted things because you actually believe them, on the other hand, I pity you. Not only are you not responsible, but you’re a danger to society and civilization. Thanks for warning me; now I can be on the lookout for you.
I’m equally disturbed, however, at those who seem to be taking a line of appeasement. There are those who seem to believe that somehow, the victims deserve what they got, through some twisted logic that claims the policies of the US led inescapably to this action. There are those who seem to think that now that the United States, and by extension, the entire world has shown that it can be hurt by suicidal madmen that we simply must face up to the fact that our own actions caused this. After all, as I read it on more than one web log “most people in the world hate Americans.”
Only by eschewing our right to defend ourselves and laying ourselves prostrate at the feet of maniacs, crying “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!” can we hope to spare ourselves from further violence and avoid plunging the entire world into unremitting bloodshed. For some of these people, every disaster or unfortunate occurrence is the direct responsibility of the United States. We, because of our hubris, our intolerable contempt for non-Americans, and our inexcusable abundance, somehow deserved this and must atone. Even worse, the American public, being a bunch of slavering morons, and the American government, being made up completely of corrupt, self-serving power-seekers, will most assuredly begin an indiscriminate bombing campaign of every Moslems city in the Middle East, without any thought whatsoever as to who might have actually perpetrated this crime.
I don’t know whether to ascribe these attitudes to self-loathing (in the case of Americans, anyway), muzzy-headed thinking, or what. Certainly, I have been critical and suspicious of the US government myself, and will continue to be so. This is a time honored American tradition, and part of why the United States is a powerful nation. Certainly, American foreign policy in the past several years, and most definitely under the current administration, has been arrogant, often misguided, and in some cases downright wrong. There are individuals and nations with valid complaints against the US. I sincerely hope (and am reasonably optimistic) that the events of the past few days will cause the people of the US and our government to rethink this situation and make positive changes. I hope that this actually provokes open debate about things like civil liberties, and catapults this issue to the forefront of the American consciousness. There is an opportunity here, while the nation is awakened and focused, to actually make positive progress in these areas. It is up to those of us who are cognizant of the issues involved to offer constructive proposals to our elected officials, and to participate in the process of making these issues known. This is the very nature of participative government, something many of us seem to have forgotten.
More importantly, despite the fact that certain people or nations might not care for us, there is simply no justification for the atrocities we experienced yesterday. Claiming so is simply another form of exactly what I was ranting about above, directed at Americans rather than other ethnic or religious groups.Consider for a moment, the case of a promiscuous woman, attractively dressed, surrounded by drunken men in a bar. If she is gang-raped, would you buy the defense that she “only had what was coming to her?” Would you suggest that she simply accept her fate and apologize for “provoking” a group of men to rape her? What if she’d been a real bitch, had treated many of the men in question shabbily, had emotionally manipulated them, or had cheated them out of money and favors? Does she deserve physical and sexual assault then? I’m disturbed that people who I suspect would react in outrage at the above example seem to have no qualms about suggesting that the same thing is permissible on a national, even international scale.
You may not like President Bush. Hell, I don’t like President Bush. You might not care for the cavalier process of the circus we called our last national election. You may be as angered as I am by ever-expanding corporate greed, self-serving politicians, and short-sighted policies. None of that, however, justifies the cold-blooded murder of thousands of civilians, the destruction of vast amounts of property, the disruption of transportation and communication systems, and the attempted ruin of global financial systems, particularly without any genuine, honest attempt to negotiate a solution. Furthermore, it in no way justifies claiming that the United States, or any other nation for that matter, has no right to forcibly defend itself from the depredations of people who believe that car bombs and child killing are legitimate ways to gain political power.
Oppression is wrong, be it through force or economic dominance, and all the West has a great deal of soul searching to do to transcend the mistakes and arrogance of the past and help all the peoples of the world make a better future. Equally so, however, terrorism is wrong, and the sane, rational people and nations of the world must unite to stop it. In many cases, this is going to mean economic aid and changes in foreign policy. It will mean taking a longer, less self-serving and short-sighted view. There are genuine grievances to be addressed. There is an opportunity for us all to emerge from this time of horror and work to make that happen. This is the best means of remembering and venerating those who died yesterday.
There are going to be cases, however, where we are not dealing with rational people. There are going to be groups that commit unspeakable acts not out of any genuine grievance, but out of a desire for power, out of ethnic hatred, and out of religious intolerance. The will continue to try and kill Americans and others out of these insane motivations, and there is not one chance of negotiating with these people. There is no opportunity to change their minds. They are not rational. They are psychopaths leading the misguided, the ignorant, and the thrill seeking, and they are more than ready to launch their followers into bloody death as a means of advancing their own agenda and feeding their own egos. Whoever they eventually turn out to be, I am confident that, at the core, this will be an apt description of the individuals behind yesterday’s attack.
On dozens of web pages over the past two days I have read the quote from Gandhi that states “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.” This is a noble sentiment. Gandhi, however, faced the British, a society free and rational enough that it had no ability or real stomach for the wholesale massacre of passively resisting civilians. Things may have turned out quite differently had he been facing the monsters of the Third Reich, who held no such convictions.
The actions of yesterday lead me to believe that the perpetrators we are facing have more in common with the Third Reich is their outlook than they do with the British of 1930’s India. These are not rational people with whom we can eventually come to an accommodation, if we just sit down and are prepared to listen to them. Appeasement will have no better outcome than it did in Europe prior to WWII; and I can empathize with Al’s well-stated view on this. I am not calling for revenge, but it is only prudent to realize that there are monsters in the world, and we must act to protect ourselves and all other civilized, rational societies. This will neither be easy or quick. I am very much afraid, however, that is the only thing that can be done.
