communiques

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 1:22 PM
Subject: RE: ...the bowl breaks....

> Hi folks,
>
> Forgive the unattractive formatting as I attempt to frame my responses
below with outtakes and pastes.........my $0.02......
>
> H. writes:
>
> "So, my feelings are mixed. I feel something like we are victims, and
> something like we are the ugly Americans."
>
> Well said -- a good description of the contradictory emotions that we're
all wrestling with. I share a message I rcvd today from my best friend:
>
> J. writes:
>
> "Hey Buddy: Feel the same way. Or is it that I don't know what I feel?
> Want to kill somebody one minute, want to hug somebody the next. When I'm
> in the hug mode, I'm thinking of you guys."
>
> H. writes:
>
> "We have played into bin Laden's hands, just as if we had handed him guns
> and armies."
>
> I'm currently thinking of terrorism in terms of being the most extreme
> form of passive-aggressive behavior. On the one hand, having been attacked, if
> we don't respond, we are the vanquished. If we do respond, we are the
> oppressors. It's a lose-lose game. If there were a shred of humanity of
> morality at work here at all, terrorists who have made the decision to
> engage in an act of such egregious aggression against a nation (forgive
> the jingoism) of America's size, stature and resources -- financial, political
> and technological -- the very absolute *least* they could do is to warn
> their own citizens, and then immediately evacuate the nation.
>
> Because we've been known to be swift and brutally ruthless in our
> retaliation. Brutally merciless. Our own pundits and politicos have
> already verbalized their opinions -- that our retaliation, which will
> inevitably come, will be, when it arrives, "completely disproportionate"
> and will take the form of "ending states that support terrorism."
>
> S. writes:
>
> "It's not just our support of Israel, altho that has a lot to do with it.
> Why do we support Israel? Not because we *like* Israel, necessarily, but
> more because Israel is our toe-hold into the Middle East, and we need to
> protect our affordable gas prices. Our Middle East policies are driven (if
> you'll pardon the expression) by what is good at the gas pumps and in our
> pocketbooks, with little regard for anybody else."
>
> I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better summary of the origin of the
> term "ugly Americans." As for oil interests, see "Gulf War." Nothing about
> that one fit Aquinas's definition of a "just war."
>
> S. writes more:
>
> "IMNSHO, suicide bombings are a tool of desperation...I cannot accept the
> stereotype that "those people" have glorified suicide to the point where it
> has so easily overcome the instinct of self-preservation. For a people (or
> an individual, for that matter) to consider a suicide mission to be viable,
> they must feel that there is no other way."
>
> B. asks:
>
> "Ever notice how those that direct suicide missions in any form, never
> really put themselves in a position to die for the cause their own damn selves?"
>
> The phrase "lunatic fringe" comes to my mind. For instance, who in their
> right mind would, in our current climate, phone in a bomb threat? Who would
> attempt to board a place with false id's? Answer: No one. No one in their
> right minds would even consider such a thing. These individuals are of some
> wholly alien psychic make-up.
>
> H. writes:
>
> "My reaction is weak in the extreme, and I'm a bit ashamed of it. Maybe I've
> been working in juvenile court too long, but I have this feeling of wanting
> to understand what in god's name we have done to them, that they are pushed
> to this much anger. It's the same reaction I have to juvenile murderers:
> what happened to this kid that makes him so angry and lets him have so
> little regard for life?"
>
> [ I would say that shame is not what we need, but I understand it. And I
> appreciate your humility -- you've stared in the face of serious and
> irreparable injustices more than most of us, certainly more than me, H. ]
>
> S. poses a similar question:
>
> "It's time for us to ask what our culpability is...what have we done to make
> America and Americans targets?"
>
> Best I can say is that I'm conflicted. Coming from someone who doesn't
> believe that humans are intrinsically evil, this kind of tragedy is hard to
> explain. I tend to think there is no explanation, though I, too, am at risk
> for oversimplification. The only way I can even remotely comprehend it is
> if I look at it from a perspective of critical mass. Perhaps the sum total
> of positive and negative mass in the universe is continually swinging into
> and out of equilibrium. Perhaps at present, we've reached a point where the
> negative has reached critical mass, and has become a real threat, and only
> The Universe really "knows" this, and what we're sadly witnessing is a
> cycle, is the utterly conscience-less swing of the pendulum. Think of the
> human spiritual energy involved -- we're talking like 5,000 *LIVES* -- where
> does that energy go? I don't believe that it goes nowhere. Perhaps, as I
> heard Netanyahu (sp?) say, this was our "wake up call from hell," like Pearl
> Harbor, like the Holocaust. Perhaps humans are just dense, and this is what
> it takes before we realize that there's a serious imbalance, that the center
> is not holding. There's nothing positive about it, but maybe, from a
> Universal perspective (which I, granted, have no right to claim, even if it
> were possible, and I don't know that it is) this is a corrective measure,
> some cosmic trigger to address a universal wrong. I wish I knew more. I
> wish I knew anything.
>
> Peace,
>
> Rune

Aside: Ram Dass responds.