The Pain of September 10...
Sunday, 10. September 2006, 14:33:10
The horrific sight of burning buildings might have been a new vista for Americans on September 11, 2001, but it was certainly nothing new to the rest of the world.
World Trade Center, 2001
Tehran Apartment Building, 2003
Burning Office Building, Belgrade, former Republic of Yugoslavia, 1999
But there's nothing that I could say that Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin Professor of Journalism, hasn't said better. This text, republished at CommonDreams.org, is from a speech he gave at an anti-war rally on September 11, 2005, in Austin, Texas. I agree wholeheartedly.
There was nothing special about the pain of Americans on September 11, 2001. And there is no hope for this world until we in the United States -- the most powerful and affluent country in the history of the world -- understand that.
The deaths of 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania mattered, but no more and no less than the thousands of other deaths in the world that day, and the day before, and the day before that. Or the deaths since, as the United States has used the grief of Americans to justify two illegal wars of aggression, wars to consolidate the power and control of the few, wars accepted by the many out of moral laziness and fear.
All over the country today, people will be speaking about the nobility of the United States, the barbarism of the attacks on us, the deep suffering of Americans. I will do none of that.
I will not mark September 11 as a day of special grief until all of us mark every day as a day of special grief for those killed by the callous and cruel exercise of power. I am through indulging the grief of Americans. I will not be part of it. I will not contribute to it any longer.
Indeed.
