BlogHer - September 11, 2007: Looking for daylight - Comments

Thanks, Laurie -- and let me share something else...

Kim Pearson — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:06:22 -0500

Hi Laurie,
One thing I didn't mention about the coverage that we worked on six years ago was a piece that we ran from Ghanaian-American immigrant, actor musician and activist, Derrick Ashong, My Uncle, Japhet Aryee, is Missing. To this day, I cannot read this piece without crying. A few excerpts:

I feel very hurt by what has happened this week on a number of different levels. First my heart goes out to all of the families who have lost loved ones and who fear for the safety of those who are missing. I also pray for all who have friends, co-workers, acquaintances et al. who are today stricken with fear, foreboding, uncertainty or loss regarding the status and whereabouts of those for whom they care. To call this a tragedy would be to say too little when words cannot say enough. Perhaps it’s better not to call it anything at all. Then again, sometimes sorrow needs a name in order to be drawn from the hearts of a people.

When most Americans think of Desert Storm, I imagine they must envision a "video-game" conflict. We went in there with computer-guided weaponry, laid waste to the incompetent Iraqi military, achieved our stated goals and got out from under the shadow of Vietnam-era humiliation. It was a bang-up job with relatively few casualties, and it proved the might and technological superiority of American military power. I will not get into the validity or degrees of verity of these previous statements, because it is not my present intention to argue about the Gulf War. I would, however, like to state that for many, Desert Storm was far from a video game.

When we returned to Qatar in the summer of 1990, the desert air was rife with speculation. Why did this happen? Whose fault is it? What's going to happen next? Questions we are all currently quite familiar with. I remember hosting American soldiers who were barely older than myself at the time. I remember their courage, I remember the fear beneath it, I remember their youth. I remember the primary concern at the time, being the potential use of chemical or biological agents by the Iraqi military. Various nations were evacuating their citizens from a country populated primarily by expatriates. Many of those who stayed were being issued gas masks by their respective governments. I remember thinking: "There's no way the Ghanaian government is going to send the four of us some gas masks." Fortunately, there turned out to be more than four of us in the country and as members of the British Commonwealth, we got the hook up anyway. Unfortunately this was not the case for everyone.

There is so much more I could say. My high school sweetheart is half-Palestinian. My freshman roommate is half-crazy but all Jewish. I love them both, and before I see their ethnicity I see their humanity. But in my life I also see the pain of people who have been near mortally wounded. People who have been stripped of their dignity, their livelihoods, indeed their very lives by forces with great power but little value for "the other." These people are Black, they are Jewish, they are Palestinian, they are Irish, Croatian, Rwandan, Indonesian, South African, Nigerian, Chinese, Japanese, Sierra Leonian, they are the world. Today my heart bleeds with fear for my own family and my eyes burn with tears of acrimony, vengeance and sorrow. But as I look beyond my own grief, I wonder how many others also grieve? Around the world, how many have known the never-ending twilight of suffering? How many have looked into the eyes of those they love and seen their own shame? How many have cried to the same God for retribution?

It is time for we as a nation to wake up. The struggles of human beings around the world are indeed our own. We are not exempt from the asphyxiating roots of hatred and intolerance; indeed, we sit in the highest branches of the tree they built. And today we see that though we live above the clouds, we cannot ignore the turmoil that threatens to uproot the foundations of our global society.

I wasn't born an American. I chose to become one, and I thought long and hard before doing so. I made the choice I did because despite her faults, I believe in what America STANDS for. And so I stand prepared to defend the nation to whom I am promised. Still I pray that she recognize, that the only way to truly fight "evil," is with truth. If we stand for justice, we must hear the cries of all her people, even if they don't speak English. My mother taught me as a child that "charity begins at home." I pray for my family. I pray for yours. I pray for our nation, our leaders and those around the world. I pray for peace. God bless us all.

Where do you turn, when you reach the battle zone, and the face behind the enemy is your own?

I can't do it justice by excerpting. Please read the whole thing. It still makes me cry.

Kim

BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Kim, thanks for this.

lauriewrites — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:34:23 -0500

I am catching up after getting past a couple of deadlines. This was a wonderful collection of your own thoughts plus other blogs...Our world can be so isolating in spite of our unprecedented ability to communicate with each other 24/7. It's important to remember that the outcome of that dreadful day can and should be connection. Some things can't be fixed, but there's no harm in the reaching out.

Laurie
LaurieWrites

September 11, 2007: Looking for daylight

Kim Pearson — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:07:36 -0500

It was a gray Tuesday today in central New Jersey,with intermittent rains falling steadily as fresh tears. There was little overt acknowledgment of the 9/11 anniversary, just over an hour away from Manhattan. No need -- the shadows of memory are palpable. That day in 2001, sitting in a computer lab that my students and I used to launch our local coverage, I wrote:

"On the morning of September 11, 2001, individual Americans and people around the world siezed upon the Internet, as well as television, radio and telephones as a way of making sense of madness. What we saw and heard seemed scripted by some B-grade Hollywood hack: first the news that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, then live images of a second plane, and the towers imploding, and then the word about the Pentagon and the rumors of elsewhere, and there were no words to be said, and no sense to be made, but we kept searching...."

Six years later, we are still searching: for a way out of the morass in Iraq, for clues to the enigma of Osama bin Laden and his confederates, for clues about how we to make our differences a source of strength, instead of fear.

Cheryl Rofer at Whirled Views has been searching too. She's wondering why we ever invaded Iraq. She's also been paying close attention to what the presidential candidates are saying about foreign policy. Check out her close reading of a series of essays by some of the leading candidates in a series of essays for Foreign Affairs magazine. She summarizes essays by Edwards, Giuliani, Obama, Richadson and Romney, capped by some general observations such as this:

"All of the essays contained a certain amount of posturing and fluffy feel-good, along with bones thrown to special interests. That is what I was trying to strip away to get to the policy prescriptions. The nature of the posturing, of course, is important, and, by and large, consistent with the ways the candidates present themselves. Thus Obama is for change, Edwards is populist, Richardson is wonky, and Giuliani keeps reminding us of 9/11. Romney is harder to characterize, sort of Giuliani lite....

I mentioned earlier that the candidates tend to present a practice or policy that they deem undesirable, but do not necessarily say how they would improve on it. Richardson and Edwards were the most specific in building on past mistakes; Obama somewhere in the middle, and Romney and Giuliani the vaguest."

The whole series is definitely worth reading.

At South by Southwest Carol Gee worries that the War on Terror has not only cost us "terrible loss of life and national treasure" but also "a serious erosion of civil liberties of US citizens."

"September 11, 2001 was a terrible day for the people of the United States. The loss of life, the turn of events in the Middle East, the huge debts incurred, and any resulting fearfulness of our people are all confounding consequences to be confronted. Among the most confounding consequences, in my opinion, was the damage done to the U.S. Constitution. The current administration's terribly misguided effort to "make us more safe" did nothing of the sort. Our leaders must understand that we cannot let the most cherished values of our nation come under successful attack from extremists, because we became too fearful. We cannot let the terrorists succeed with that, any more than with any other aspect of the conflict."

Rep. Jane Harman, D-CA worries that the law that Congress passed last month giving the executive branch expanded powers to conduct warrantless surveillance is "overbroad." Harman, who chairs the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Risk Assessment, wants to see a narrower version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed that would restore the original law's "carefully crafted, bipartisan law to check and balance unfettered executive authority."

For CP at An Oxymoron is not an Idiot With Zits, America has changed in ways that are palpable and personal. An American woman married to an Israeli man with an Arab-sounding name, she is frustrated and ambivalent over the recurring episodes of racial profiling he endures when he has to travel on business. While her husband takes the searches he endures in stride,

"I have mixed feelings about this issue. On one hand, I can understand that our country needs to profile certain people based on a pre-conceived notion that all middle easterners are a threat to this country. This is being very narrow, of course, because we are allies of Israel. If I were the one getting on the plane with some suspicious looking person, I would want them checked out too...I think. But, on the other hand, this is something that the hotband has to endure everytime he flies. He feels it is warranted, their suspicions of him, due to past transgressions of other middle easterners. Yet, I can't help but be protective of a man who releases spiders outdoors instead of killing them."

Finally, Ann Althouse has a question for the "young man amid the youth of Islam" that Osama bin Laden is trying to recruit for new terror attacks:

"Why not live instead? It's a rather wonderful alternative to death."

Or as Sade put it earlier this summer,

No matter, no matter what color,
You are still my brother
No matter no matter what color
You are still my brother
Everybody wants to live together,
Why can't we live together?