Please...please...please do not be offended by this post!!
There is something that I want to share with you about the reaction of a friend of mine to what happened 3 years ago.
I will not forget what that friend told me some days after the 11th of September 2001.
There is something that I want to share with you about the reaction of a friend of mine to what happened 3 years ago.
I will not forget what that friend told me some days after the 11th of September 2001.
"Let all Americans understand what is going on in the rest of the world. Let them really feel what they have done to citizens of other countries. Let them understand what others feel when Americans bombard cities of other countries and kill civilians. Let them see what "killing innocent people" means."
I really don't agree with what she said and I am 100% against killing civilians. Let me clarify that 9/11 attack was a shameful act of terrorism and in no way I want to defend the disgusting act of killing 3000 innocent people but what I am saying is that there is "some" truth to her argument!! What do you think? I want to ask you and her if Americans really understood what she wanted them to understand?!
1 comment:
Though your friend put it a little more bluntly than most would today, if I'm reading her correctly, her point is that since it has been a very long time since America has fought a battle on her own soil, Americans haven't had to deal with the kind of losses that we inflict when we go to war in another country. Being insulated from the experience ourselves, we mentally gloss over the reports of civilians caught in the middle of war zones and killed. If I may paraphrase, I think her hope was that we would be more sympathetic to the civilians in nations ravaged by wars we've been a part of after we've dealt with the same loss ourselves.
It would have been nice if that were how it had worked. But no, I do not think people have come away with a greater appreciation for war's cost to innocent bystanders. If anything, I think it has had quite the opposite effect. I knew people who, since late 2001, have wanted nothing more than to be able to personally inflict 3000 civilian casualties on anyone they thought might be in any way involved. Rather than making us more sympathetic, it has made us more hungry for revenge, and that is how we get escalating, unending cycles of violence.
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