2001-09-20|9:33 p.m.
So, I am skipping my autobio for a while because I feel like rambling some more.
Here is an amazing poem written by my ex-Native American Lit. teacher, Bear Wolf, who is still a very good mutual friend of my boy and me:
Kinda Like Fireworks
For the tens of thousands of innocents who died on September 11, 2001
for no other reason than they were working for a paycheck in order to survive
I was not surprised
When bodies started raining
From capitalism skies
Because someone was fed up
With centuries of American lies
Shocked, horrified
Hurt, amazed
Unglued
But I was not surprised
When bits of wall
Littered the street
Like incomplete
Jigsaw pieces
Of a discarded puzzle
Too complex to finish
Pained, disgusted
Scarred, blistered
Saddened
But I was not surprised
When blame was laid
With no presence of proof
A new foundation
For a tower of violence
That will be mislaid upon the many
For the actions of the few
Sickened, disturbed
Angered, enraged
Appalled
But I was not surprised
When the color of skin
Became the only reason
For brutal bullies
To beat the innocent
Mirroring those other bullies
Who just killed tens of thousands of innocents
And hijacked our invulnerability
Grounded, bludgeoned
Stabbed, twisted
Dissected
But I was not surprised
When the innocent lower rung
Was taken out
Mere cannon fodder
For the penthouse floors
Of the corporate ladder
Frightened, shattered
Lost, empty
Confronted
But I was not surprised
When a pair of five-year-old eyes
Who had already seen a thousand homicides
In cartoons and video games
On the news and other commercial TV shows
Said it kinda looked like fireworks
Ok�.back to me, unfortunately.
I have the biggest crush on (I know, yet another crush, but I can�t help it) on my statistics teacher. His school website is http://www.onlineacademy.net/butros/. He does this sorta giggle thing after silly things that he says in class that makes my dorky, little heart flutter.
I am joining a United Nations club. The teacher involved is a good friend with my boy and he seems really impressed that I am a political science major. Wow, I am just so excited. And the apparently he is a Middle Eastern political expert and spent large portions of his life over there. Our prospective country is Jordan and the funny thing is that my statistics teacher lived in Jordan for a long period of time and now he is involved in this.
Also related to this is a peace rally forming at our school. S is making all the plans for it. A is making the shirts (he is a graphic designer and computer tech for a local sporting goods store and makes tons of shirts for me, like my upcoming Jurassic Five shirt). I am the muse of sorts. I came up with a anti-war flag idea and gave it to A to design. Plus, I am helping A design the shirts and came up with the slogan with him too. I guess Sati is getting press there too. And I told A (a film major) that this is an excellent time to start a documentary on the affect of an issue this large on a town so small. So, he will most likely be filming it. Wow, the next year is going to be an amazing one.
Oh, and I talked to jcruelty for the first time today! Making this day, an overall 6.98 according to MM�s (see hungerhurts) diary.
Oh, here is something interesting Sati sent me:
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean
killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity,
but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we
do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the
belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am
from Afghanistan, and, even though I've lived here for 35 years, I've never
lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will
listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.
I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt
in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York.
I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban
and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of
Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over
Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When
you think Taliban, think Nazi SS. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler.
And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the
concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to
do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They
would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear
out the rat's nest of international thugs holed up in their country.
Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban?
The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all
destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons
why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done.
Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the
Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time
So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true
fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there
with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs
to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing
innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on
the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die
fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much
bigger than that, folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have
to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of
Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by?
You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and
the West.
And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.
That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right
there. He really believes Islam would beat the West. It might
seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and
the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in
those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose; even better
from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West
would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and
millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that?
Bin Laden does. Anyone else? ~ Tamim Ansary
Word of the day: fortuitous- occurring by chance/ fortunate, lucky/ coming or happening by a lucky chance
�Protect innocent lives. Declare war on ignorance.� --- Our new slogan.
I can�t help but think what would Orwell think of this.