September 14,
2001
Narco News 2001
Editorial
1991 Ticker-Tape
Parade, New York ---- 2001 Palestinian Vigil, Jerusalem
Parade
Rout
By Barry Crimmins
Publisher's Note by Al
Giordano: This morning,
somewhere in a country called América, having been bounced
from airplane flights twice now this week trying to get to New
York, I received a draft of the following essay by Barry Crimmins.
It is the first response
to the week's tragedy that truly speaks for me.
Those of us who closely
follow the "drug war" know that governments and media
lie, they manipulate, they hide other agendas, they prey upon
legitimate emotions and principles, distort immediate history
and, by comission or omission, attempt to railroad We The People
into not thinking for ourselves.
This week, a tragedy struck
U.S. soil, New York soil. Being an American and being a New Yorker
means questioning authority. In the coming days Narco News
will offer comprehensive analysis of recent events and take a
hard look where they may take us as a hemisphere. Meanwhile,
Barry Crimmins speaks for me. He gives voice to my troubles,
and maybe to yours.
Parade
Rout
Editorial
By Barry Crimmins
When
Americans saw the pictures of the Palestinian
youths celebrating after the hateful suicide/massacres that sucker
punched the U.S.A. in its national soul on September 11, they
were outraged.
How could anyone do such a callous and
insensitive thing? Rather easily, actually. People do it all
the time, even Americans.
After the Gulf War, New York City welcomed
the troops with a massive parade and celebration. Americans thought
they were marking the end of hostilities. This week we may have
learned that some people viewed the hoopla as escalation.
Consider the United States' righteous
anger when it saw a few Palestinian kids dancing in glee over
Tuesday's terror. Well imagine if Baghdad turned out for a parade
in honor of the evil lunatics who slaughtered so many in New
York, Washington and Pennsylvania. An awful lot of Americans
would reflexively desire to inflict the same sort of pain on
the celebrants as had been suffered in America. Even if it took
a decade, they'd dance if Baghdad were bombarded with the same
disdain for the well-being of innocents that was demonstrated
by the mass murderers who hijacked planes full of unwary travelers
and crashed them into large concentrations of human life.
Right now many Americans are clamoring
to send out the U.S. Air Force to rain indiscriminate hell on
Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere. This is a natural response at
a time of understandable outrage. It's also wrong. Even if certain
governments helped in the planning and execution of the dastardly
acts, it's unlikely that indiscriminate bombing would harm any
culpable party.
Much like George W. Bush, as soon as any
retaliation began those truly responsible would hop the next
transport for the local equivalent of Nebraska. Actually, they
are probably already there. But office personnel, firemen, policemen,
women, children, senior citizens, militarily conscripted peasants,
EMT's, emergency room physicians and nurses won't have that luxurious
option. They won't have a private jet to whisk them away. They
will be at the next Ground Zero, innocents in harm's way. When
they are massacred and maimed, their loved ones will become prime
picking for those who want nothing more than to forge another
link in the chain of violence.
TV talking heads tell us that the terror
that struck the U.S.A. on Tuesday was an assault on democracy.
That's nonsense. American democracy sustained a much worse blow
last December when the president was appointed rather than elected.
In fact, American democracy hasn't been in such good shape for
years. Had it not grown pale and wan a decade earlier perhaps
there would have been a fair debate over a massacre that was
sanitized with the sexy moniker "Desert Storm."
And perhaps a few honest souls would have
been heard when they warned that although war seemed easy and
obvious, it would only serve to make the world more violent and
unstable. They prophesied that someday amplified violence and
instability could come to America. They were proven right on
Tuesday when, with the accuracy of a smart bomb, the sins of
his father were visited upon George W. Bush's constituents.
Carpet bombing Iraq did not punish the
dictator Saddam Hussein but it most assuredly ended tens of thousands
of innocent lives. It ruined families and broke hearts.
Participation in Desert Storm also damaged
many young Americans. One of them was named Timothy McVeigh.
If Osama bin Laden turns out to be the
mastermind of this barbarous assault then we have the Reagan
Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency to thank for
training him back in the Eighties when he was "freedom fighting"
Soviets in Afghanistan. But then when they were instructing him
in ruthlessness how were they supposed to know he'd do his graduate
work in the U.S.A.? They cynically estimated his collateral damage
would be done to people with distant and different ways of life.
The hard lesson available this week is that the senseless massacre
of innocents can impose needless and undeserved anguish regardless
of geographical or cultural distance.
In the coming days as the rubble is cleared
and the bodies are counted Americans will be offered simple solutions
to complex problems. To accept these easy answers will mean there
will be more carnage inflicted upon innocents. Without thoughtfulness,
outrage will ferment into madness.
So
this is a call from an American for
the end of the killing of innocents, anywhere, no matter what.
To truly honor the thousands who had their lives needlessly stolen
this week, we mustn't succumb to the urge to inflict a similar
fate upon others. Let us work diligently to track down and bring
to justice each accomplice in these horrid acts. But let us not
use our pain as justification to become what we resist. Let us
not decide to kill more innocents and then dance down a parade
route indelibly stained with innocent blood. Let unjust retribution
stop with us.
"In War,
Truth is the First Casualty"