Your Thoughts and Letters

reflecting on September 11th, 2001,
it's probably because I'm a man,
with a man's foolish ego,
that it seems ironic to me,
while a woman can tell it like it really is,
most well-read men seem to whimper
and whine
over what they lost
all the while
distant others keep losing...

Bravo, Susan Sontag, bravo!

Dave Alt's Letter to Senator Diane Feinstein

Senator Feinstein
331 Hart Senate Officer Bldg.
Washington D.C. 20510
(202) 228-3954 ; (415) 393-0710

RE: Senator Feinstein Calls Attacks on New York City and Pentagon "Declaration of War" on U.S.

Senator Feinstein,

While I am heartened to hear that your considerations for the national response to the recent attacks are well-focused, I wonder why you do not consider addressing the root causes, rather than simply taking a hard line with respect to the symptoms?

Please recognize that, by its nature, provoked terrorism is impossible to weed out. The only way to reduce covert terrorism is to cease and desist imposing our Imperialist foreign policies on developing nations. Why do you choose to ignore, for example, our sponsorship of state-sponsored terrorism via paramilitary and military coercion across the globe, from Columbia to Palestine?

I dare you to consider, even for a moment, the fate of any one of the peoples we oppress. We are at war with them. We bomb them, starve them and extort them. Their act of war is retaliation to ours. While there is certainly no disputing that innocent people have been killed, who is responsible for the ruthless oppression delivered to them? It is clearly our government, and by association its people. To view our nation and its population as "innocent" in this light is naive.

I understand that politically, you cannot be effective by taking an unpopular stance which includes, as a component, national face-saving. But please realize that by doing so, without addressing the root causes, you are choosing to promote arrogance and hypocrisy, not only for yourself, but for all your constituents. As a human being I ask that you reconsider the policies you support, and to recognize that a more effective alternative is screaming out for endorsement.

Your proposed actions highten tensions. They increase the likelihood that terrorism will recur. Your actions will lead to an erosion of the freedoms we wish to embrace. You have the opportunity to change the world; I humbly ask that you choose to use it.

Thank you.

David Alt

Susen Passed on this Piece from the New Yorker

The New Yorker - Talk of the Town
Issue of 2001-09-24
Posted 2001-09-17

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy-which entails disagreement, which promotes candor-has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.

-Susan Sontag

Forest Passed on Piece from a Friend in Minnesota

I was driving down my long, gravel driveway in northern Minnesota, listening to our local radio station, when the news began to break. Hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Center, a similar incident in Washington DC, fires blazing, people jumping, towers toppling, horrors multiplying. Like so many others, my feelings began with disbelief and moved quickly to shock, sadness, fear, compassion, and a nearly unquenchable desire to help. But underlying this turmoil was something unnamed - a steady, solid feeling that I couldn't identify, but that was reassuring as the rest of my emotions somersaulted through my stomach. Two days later, with escalating talk of war, the feeling began to fade, replaced by bitterness, disappointment, and cynicism. It was then that I realized the feeling had been hope.

I was surprised at first. Hope for what? With all those tortured deaths and anguished survivors, endangered rescue workers and mountains of rubble, how was hope part of the picture? It was when I began to lose it that I knew. I had hoped for change, hoped for peace, hoped that such an enormous horror would open the way to a kinder world. It was a naive hope, of course, perhaps born out of the denial that is the initial stage of grief. Now, a week after the terrorist attacks, it has transformed to a patient, persistent commitment to peace. In that process I have had some thoughts I would like to share.

We cannot expect peaceful solutions from people for whom winning is all-important. This, I believe, describes most of our top elected officials and the people who advise them. Consider how these people have been raised and educated, and the career path they have followed. Their history lessons, like most of ours, have centered around wars. They have had a life of competitive endeavors and image management. To get where they are they have needed to stand out in a crowd, to focus attention on themselves. Their personal life has had to appear flawless. They have learned to polarize the issues and take a firm stand on one side. In elections, showing consideration for another side of an issue would be considered waffling and votes would be lost. Our leaders have had precious little encouragement or opportunity to reframe problems, to seek creative solutions, to strive for consensus. When we give these people virtually unlimited military resources and the power to use them, how can we then expect them to look at the complexity of a situation, take the time to develop multi-faceted solutions, and choose peace?

We cannot expect peaceful solutions from people who are insensitive or ignorant regarding other cultures and nations. One of the horrors of last week occurred when George Bush declared "This is the first war of the 21st century." With that statement he brushed aside the suffering of the parents of Palestinian schoolgirls gunned down in the streets near their homes. He ignored the civilians dragged from their homes in Sierra Leone and forced to watch their loved ones being raped, tortured, and murdered. He discounted the experience of people who, every day of this century, have endured tanks in their streets, armed soldiers outside their homes, bombs exploding in their businesses, and blockades at their places of worship.

We cannot expect peaceful solutions from people who allow others to decide when we are at war. By law, our president can not declare war, yet he has done so many times following the disasters of September 11, and we have let him. Our media has flaunted his declarations like they were something to be proud of instead of insults to our Constitution. Others have taken up his war cry, nearly drowning out the voices for reason, for debate and slow deliberation. Many have jumped onto the war wagon with less thought to its consequences than they would give to ordering a meal in a restaurant. Loyalty to our president and our government in times of crisis feels like the right thing to many of us. But our leaders must follow the procedures we established in more rational times and not use the drama of the moment to change the distribution of power that has been the strength of our democracy for centuries. Congress is the only entity that can declare that America is at war. As American citizens, it is our responsibility to learn all we can about the situation, to discuss solutions with others who have different perspectives, to arrive at thoughtful, moral opinions, and to share them intelligently with our representatives in Congress. A strong leader can lead Americans to peace, but it takes more finesse, more charisma, and more work than satisfying our anger by shooting up the world.

We cannot expect peaceful solutions from people who value money and material things above human rights. We Americans profess a strong belief in freedom and we donate generously to organizations that work for good causes. If asked, we might claim that liberty is worth dying for. But our daily habits have a stronger impact than our charitable acts and noble statements. We drink coffee every morning that has caused the destruction of habitat essential to a whole people's way of life. We wear clothing that was made from cotton picked by migrant children who are hungry and uneducated, slipping through the loopholes of our health and school systems to be caught by a big business that depends on cheap labor to show a strong profit. We pump gas from the Middle East into our cars. Can we even guess the cost in human suffering, not to mention environmental degradation, caused by our petroleum demands? We grab a hamburger at lunch that required enough grain production to feed 10 people for a month. We check the performance of the stock market, more concerned about the comfort of our retirement than with business practices that create poverty. We shop for a new toaster and choose based on price and performance, giving no thought to its production in a foreign manufacturing plant where workers are paid less for a week's work than we just spent for the toaster. On the way to the counter we pick up a few other things made cheaply by child labor in squalid conditions, but looking shiny and attractive and strategically placed to get our attention. They will be lost or in the garbage by next week. We watch the news, trusting that somehow our favorite reporters are telling us everything we really need to know about what happened in the world today; ignoring the fact that our news programs depend on advertising from businesses that may prefer we didn't know the whole truth. Our lives are convenient and comfortable, and when hatred for America surfaces and war threatens, we consider ourselves innocent bystanders.

Peaceful solutions will come when we put fairness and compromise ahead of winning; when we insist on having a choice for peace; when those who would choose peace communicate their concerns to the leaders of our country. We will move closer to world peace when we strive to understand foreign cultures, show them respect, and build coalitions on common interests. We will have peace when we educate our children in the ways of peace, when we demonstrate peace in our daily lives, when we make peace more important than convenience and comfort.

Peace is not the absence of war. In our private lives, we do not feel peaceful just because we are not in the midst of a fight. We feel peaceful when we understand someone else, and they understand us. We feel peaceful when we have been kind or helpful, and when we have received a helping hand. We feel peaceful when we tuck our children into bed, loving them fully in spite of any hassles during the day. We feel peaceful when we go to bed without even a thought that violence in our neighborhood could disrupt our slumber. The world is very much like our private lives. Peace in the world involves the work of understanding, of helping, of loving, of creating safe places for living. Peace is not passive.

Peace is always a choice. But it is a choice that must be consciously made at many moments of the day, whether in the world at large or in our personal lives. It takes practice and skill. It takes education, seeking out and becoming role models, finding wisdom.

Peace is not a quick solution. It will require a sustained campaign in America; not a campaign of punishment and revenge, but a campaign of truth-seeking and returning to integrity. Perhaps the horrors that made us hurry home to our families, that made us pick up the phone to say "I love you" to distant friends, that made us give blood and donate money and volunteer, perhaps these horrors will continue to move us toward peace, toward understanding. To bring peace to our lives we each must choose to explain our feelings rather than make a sarcastic remark; we must turn aside a small wrong with a sense of humor rather than hold onto a resentment. For peace, we must assert our right to be heard rather than give in to apathy; we must search for solutions that fulfill everyone's true needs rather than accepting conditions that bring luxury to a few and poverty to many. For the sake of a sane world, we must lead our youth toward knowing how peace works; we must seek out our elders for the wisdom they can share.

In the aftermath of terror, prevention of more violence is essential. Punishment may have its role in that effort, but generating peace is the only route to creating a world forever free of the horrors of hate.

On September 15, my friends had a baby girl. After the pain of the week, the feelings of fear and helplessness, the guilt for my part in the world's problems, the dread of an all-out war, and always those recurrent images of violent deaths; after all this the idea of having a baby seemed out of context. It jangled my sense of timing, just like the week's beautiful fall weather. But there she was, six pounds four ounces of perfection, the embodiment of innocence. I held her close to my heart for half an hour as she slept, peace incarnate. The healing sensations were almost unbelievable. My heart literally felt like it was knitting itself back together. My churning emotions calmed, my face relaxed and smiled. Here was the potential for the change I envisioned. In one generation we could make such a difference. We could make better consumer choices, we could change how leaders are trained and elected, we could practice appreciating the diversity of humanity, we could make a better world. For this baby and all others.

These parents had selected names for this little girl, but in the end they chose one impulsively. I heard today that the same name has been given to 29 other babies born in New York City this week. Her name is Hope.

-- Johnnie Hyde