NEW! MEDIA AND PERCEPTION
STORIESWill Tears Ever Stop?
> By John Gerassi
>
> I can't help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV telling the
> heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their loved-one in
> the World Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears. But then
I
> wonder why didn't I cry when our troops wiped out
> some 5,000 poor people in Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the
> excuse of looking for Noriega. Our leaders knew
> he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo because the
> folks living there were nationalists who wanted the
> U.S. out of Panama completely.
>
> Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two million
Vietnamese,
> mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main
> architect, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not
win?
> When I went to give blood the other day, I
> spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three up in the line, and that
> reminded me: Why didn't I cry when we helped Pol
> Pot butcher another million by giving him arms and money, because
he
> was opposed to "our enemy" (who eventually
> stopped the killing fields)?
>
> To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I
> chose Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized
> that I hadn't cried when our government arranged for the murder of
> the Congo's only decent leader, to be replaced by
> General Mobutu, a greedy, vicious, murdering dictator. Nor did I
cry
> when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of
> Indonesia's Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World War II
> invaders and established a free independent country,
> and then replaced him by another General, Suharto, who had
> collaborated with the Japanese and who proceeded to
> execute at least half a million "Marxists" (in a country where, if
> folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)?
>
> I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of
that
> wonderful now-missing father playing with his
> two-month old child. Yet when I remembered the slaughter of
thousands
> of Salvadorans, so graphically described in
> the Times by Ray Bonner, or the rape and murder of those American
> nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated by CIA
> trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I
> heard how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the
> Solicitor General, whose political views I detested. But I didn't
cry
> when the US invaded that wonderful tiny Caribbean
> nation of Grenada and killed innocent citizens who hoped to get a
> better life by building a tourist airfield, which my
> government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished
building
> once the island was secure in the US camp
> again.
>
> Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister,
> planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand
> poor Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the
same
> Sharon who, with such other Irgun and Stern
> Gang terrorists become prime ministers as Begin and Shamir, killed
> the wives and children of British officers by
> blowing up the King David hotel where they were billeted?
>
> I guess one only cries only for one's own. But is that a reason to
> demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree
> with us? That's what Americans seem to want. Certainly our
government
> does, and so too most of our media. Do we
> really believe that we have a right to exploit the poor folk of the
> world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and
> they are not?
>
> So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go
> after those who killed so many of our innocent brothers
> and sisters. And we'll win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against
> Taliban. Against Iraq. Against whoever and whatever. In
> the process we'll kill a few innocent children again. Children who
> have no clothes for the coming winter. No houses to
> shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at two
or
> four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and
> Robertson will claim their death is good because they weren't
> Christians, and maybe some State Department
> spokesperson will tell the world that they were so poor that
they're
> now better off.
>
> And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want
> to? With all the new legislation establishing
> massive surveillance of you and me, our CEOs will certainly be
> pleased that the folks demonstrating against
> globalization will now be cowed for ever. No more riots in Seattle,
> Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last.
>
> Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived
> our massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo?
> A Nicaraguan girl who learned that her doctor mother and father
were
> murdered by a bunch of gangsters we called
> democratic contras who read in the CIA handbook that the best way
to
> destroy the only government which was trying to
> give the country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers,
health
> personnel, and government farm workers? Or maybe it
> will be a bitter Chilean who is convinced that his whole family was
> wiped out on order of Nixon's Secretary of State
> Henry Kissinger who could never tell the difference between a
> communist and a democratic socialist or even a
> nationalist.
>
> When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run
> the world for the sake of the bottom line, we will
> suffer someone's revenge? No war will ever stop terrorism as long
as
> we use terror to have our way. So I stopped
> crying because I stopped watching TV. I went for a walk. Just four
> houses from mine. There, a crowd had congregated
> to lay flowers and lit candles in front of our local firehouse. It
> was closed. It had been closed since Tuesday because the
> firemen, a wonderful bunch of friendly guys who always greeted
> neighborhood folks with smiles and good cheer, had
> rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower that they
> perished with them when it collapsed. And I cried again.
>
> So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it; some of your
> students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe
> even harm you. But then I put on the TV again, and there was
> Secretary of State Powell telling me that it will be okay to
> go to war against these children, these poor folks, these
US-haters,
> because we are civilized and they are not. So I
> decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one more person will ask:
> Why are so many people in the world ready to die to
> give us a taste of what we give them?
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