ACTION INSTEAD OF REACTION
What would you do if I walked up behind you, tapped you on the shoulder and when you turned around, I punched you in the face? No warning, no provocation, just the proverbial sucker punch! That is what was experienced in New York on 9/11/01, a cowardly attack on innocent civilians who were no match for diving jets filled with more innocents and jet fuel.
Human nature says that you would hit me right back. You would be scared, angry and in pain.
Those words perfectly describe the feelings experienced nationwide in the days after the attack on the World Trade Center. We all wanted to wake up on Wednesday morning to news of carpet bombing missions over Afghanistan.
Anyone watching our fight would encourage you to fight back. After all it was unfair for me to hit you like that and it hurt not only your face but also your pride. As US citizens we experienced painful loss of life and painful images of desperate families crying and holding pictures of their loved ones in hopes of finding them alive somewhere. We also couldn�t believe that we could be hit this way. Haven�t we always been the most powerful and skilled nation in the world? Surely if an attack that required this much planning and work would have been discovered by our intelligence agencies, right? How could we hold up our heads knowing that a man who lives in caves and rides donkeys was able to orchestrate this from a country that was roughly the size of Texas?
Okay, so let�s say I hit you back. I hit you, you hit me, I hit you, you hit me... After a lot of pain, loss of blood and much damage one of us would pass out or give up. After all this fighting, even, if you won the fight, would you know why I hit you in the first place? Do we know why they hate us so much? That question keeps being asked and no one has a good enough answer. Some say that it is about foreign policies or sanctions against certain countries or support for certain people. But being Americans makes us unable to grasp the thought of killing thousands of innocent people just to �prove a point�. Some people want to understand what the problem is but most of us want retaliation. Remember Timothy McViegh? Some people wanted to hear his side and try to understand his motivations, but most people wanted him dead.
Let�s say you won the fight and I limped away and you never gave me another thought. Couldn�t I just wait until my wounds healed and I gathered my strength? Wouldn�t I just wait until you relaxed and forgot about me and then hit you again? Maybe this time I would have strong and powerful friends and they hit you until you were on your knees. Usama bin Laden has been poking us for a while. He has been training terrorists in his camps for years now. He is believed to be responsible for inciting bombings aimed at Americans and American allies all over the world. We have made some half-hearted efforts to get him but it took an incident as big as the recent WTC attack to get our attention.
Our attention was needed long ago. Afghanistan has been under a tyrannical rule for six years. They have oppressed and executed their own people with chilling regularity. We have been hearing about this for a long time. We have sent food and aid workers to help but most people thought �it�s really not our business.� Translation �it doesn�t really effect me so I don�t care much.� Well it effects us now! But we all want to cause more pain for Afghan citizens with ground troops and bombing missions to level what�s left of their country. That would be a war of retaliation. It wouldn�t be about gaining territory or breaking ourselves free of oppression. It would be a knee-jerk reaction to a punch.
What if instead, after I hit you, you asked me why? Maybe I would hit you again. But I bet you would see the punch coming this time and could protect yourself. This time if anyone was watching, they might sympathize with you. Maybe even shame me into ending my attack altogether. I know that if you meet violence with violence you just get more violence. But maybe if you meet violence with defense and education and human compassion, then someday the violence might end. |
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