Good and Evil
September, 2001
adrien rain burke
Please forgive me for my seemingly unpatriotic skepticism,
but we are on the brink of war and we'd better examine some facts before we
begin to wreak the havoc of which we are capable.
Just this morning I found a letter addressed to "Dear Evil" in my email box.
(no they didn't mean me - it was addressed to the person or persons behind
the Sept 11 plane-bombing. For the record, I am not sure who was responsible.) I am really interested in getting MY house
bombed, so I sent out this answer. It probably won't be circulated much. . .
it is sadly lacking in that heroical call-to-arms stuff . But it's true.
Much of this stuff has come out in Congressional testimony - if anyone was
listening. . . . .
-Yes Americans are basically good people, and the events in NY are
an unparallelled tragedy and horror. In fact, I think we should get
whoever's behind it. The bombing of civilians is pure evil - and one of the
first steps we could take is to stop doing it ourselves. Being "good" is not
enough if it means turning a blind eye on evil done in your own name.
Because. . . . please note: we've been bombing
Iraq sporadically for ten years - neighborhoods, mostly, after we'd
destroyed their sanitation and water systems to begin with - against
international law, - and caused epidemics of typhus, and pretty much
destroyed an enviable public health and education system, so they now have a
terrible infant mortality rate, and many diseases related to malnutrition.
None of this harms their leader, but it has really helped fundamentalist
Muslims - maybe some of the bombers were recruited there. Or in Palestine,
where what little land and freedom the people have is daily taken from them.
Or in Afghanistan, where the fanatical Taliban can trace their training, and
much of their original funding to the CIA, as well as Osama Bin Ladin - who
had his own money but apparently his own CIA connections as well.
We also bombed old age homes and television stations and apartment houses
and bridges and sanitation facilities and so on in Serbia. In none of these
cases did we do as much damage in a single day perhaps as those planes did,
but we did a great deal more damage in the long run. Our society, post WTC,
will survive; our children will continue to eat and attend school and
receive medical care, (always according to the portion of their class). But
Iraqi children are infinitely worse off than they were before the Gulf War.
And Americans have barely noticed the distress, or taken responsibility for
it. Our leaders exulted over the harm we rendered on Iraq and Serbia and
mocked them, and taunted them to overthrow their leaders, who we said were
the real targets of our depredations.
When Madeline Albright was asked if she thought it was OK to have caused the
death of more than 500,000 Iraqui children, she said she thought it was
worth it. We were left to guess just what the "it" is that's worth so much
misery - because we haven't loosened Saddam's hold on power in Iraq - just
the opposite, in fact. We abandoned the rebel Kurds and others who were
interested in breaking away or overthrowing him, to torture and death. And
most Americans either don't know all this, or don't care - there is a saying
that applies here: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is
interested in you. Or more simply: the chickens always come home to roost.
There is even a word for this in our "intelligence" establishment's
terminology: Blowback.
We bombed a Panamanian slum in the middle of the night (2 or 3 a.m.. wasn't
it?) just around Christmas, 1989, and claimed no one really died, all to get
an ex-CIA asset (Noriega) who had apparently displeased our then-President
(and former head of the CIA.) And Americans did not question the impossible
statistics or revolt against the slaughter - well they were only poor people
anyway, and we don't have much sympathy for poor people anywhere.
For years we destroyed - no, we bombed- daycare centers, hospitals, schools
and villages in Nicaragua, through our trained terrorists, the Contras,
under Reagan, who called the terrorists "the equivalent of our founding
foathers". And of course, we initiated the overthrow of elected governments
in (among others) Chile, Iran, Guatemala, that great and terrible world
power Grenada. . . . . . .In Chile a reign of terror was the result, in
Guatemala it was genocide against the Indian people, in some of the
countries it was just the death of democracy for a generation or two. What
really bothers me about the present outrage is the accompanying blindness,
that does not allow us to understand how this "evil" came to be.
And as for the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, and the FBI, they should be crawling
through the streets with ashes on their heads, like Penitenti, whipping
themselves for the failure of their "intelligence"! We don't even know what
these world-class loafers and troublemakers are paid! But we do know that
billions have certainly gone into these agencies and they didn't have a clue
that the Pentagon, for chrisakes, was going to be destroyed! What are they
for? What the HELL do they do? They don't protect us, and it appears they
don't even try - maybe they're too busy overthrowing other people's
governments, or planting lies in the world's press, to be bothered with a
few dozen guys in the U.S. who happen to be plotting the biggest attack on
our nation since Pearl Harbor (but on a now-acceptable civilian target).
Whatever they did or didn't do, they are unfit and should be fired en masse
and probably tried for dereliction of duty. Or treason.
But they'll probably have to make do with a big increase in funding.
If I had a vote- or any say at all -in the way MY share of all that cash was
to be spent, I'd set up hospitals and schools and homes for orphans in every
country we've bombed since, say, 1946 - the end of WW2, and the beginning of
the Cold War. Because while our boys were being sent to various slaughters
fighting for "democracy," our government was practicing something very
different in the nations under our "sphere of influence." It has been aided
by media that seem incapable of investigating and reporting these bloody
adventures, and a public trained to believe that, no matter what betrayals
of democracy our government sets in motion, America is Good, and any
questioning of out governments' motives and actions is unpatriotic, and
gives comfort to the now-vague Forces of Evil that oppose our interests.
It's never just Good against Evil. It's never black or white. Many people
in the Middle East see us as the Great Satan - not for our religious
beliefs, but because of our political and military actions - actions that
have stifled others'hopes for freedom and self-determination for many years.
If we began to spend our billions to make things better instead of worse,
perhaps we wouldn't be creating our own worst enemies. If we don't, we may
be in for a long reign of Terror ourselves, and there will be more thousands
of people picking through rubble, waving the flag and never even seriously
asking WHY?
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