I admit that what happened was so horrible that I do not think even horrible
is the right word for it. Unfortunately, so many INOCCENT lives were lost
and that left their surviours to grieve for the rest of their life. Indeed,
the loss of ANY INNOCENT man, woman and child is a tragedy. May the soul
of all those innocent people who were killed in new york be in peace.
However, it saddens me to see that some innocent lives are valued more
than others. Here is an article that I hope you post it in Iranian times.
If you decide otherwise, then please at least try to bring to attention
other atrocities that are happening. Let associate the word terrorism to
those who terrorize innocent women, children and men and not only those
who only oppose the interest of some third country.
The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people
By Robert Fisk
The Independent, UK
12 September 2001
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East
the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration, Lawrence
of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel,
four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation
of Arab land all erased within hours as those who claim to represent
a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome
cruelty of a doomed people.
Is it fair is it moral to write this so soon, without proof,
when the last act of barbarism, in Oklahoma, turned out to be the work
of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I
am mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle
East, perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion
to come''. But we never dreamt this nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his theology, his
frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in front of
bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian army
in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence allowed
them to declare war on America.
But this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will
be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles
smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into
a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village
called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's
Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee
camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of what has
happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the massacre
of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of their
despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp what
they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting disproportionately.
All the years of rhetoric, all the promises to strike at the heart of
America, to cut off the head of "the American snake'' we took for
empty threats.
How could a backward, conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group
of regimes and small, violent organisations fulfil such preposterous promises?
Now we know. And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I
began to remember those other extraordinary assaults upon the US and its
allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterday's casualties. Did not
the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and 100 French
paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with unthinkable
precision? There were just seven seconds between the Marine bombing and
the destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks
on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt almost successful
it now turns out to sink the USS Cole in Aden.
And then how easy was our failure to recognise the new weapon of the
Middle East which neither Americans nor any other Westerners could equal:
the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber. And there will be, inevitably,
and quite immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the
injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about
"mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential
if we are not to realise how hated America has become in the land of the
birth of three great religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20,000 or 30,000 innocent deaths and
he or she will respond as decent people should, that it is an unspeakable
crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about the sanctions
that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children in Iraq,
why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's 1982
invasion of Lebanon. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught
fire last September the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession
of Palestinians, the bombardments and state-sponsored executions ... all
these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest fractional reason
for yesterday's mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame though we can be sure that Saddam
Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so but the
malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand
in the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps even
our destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy.
America has bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed
this would be cost-free. No longer so.
But, of course, the US will want to strike back against "world
terror'', and last night's bombardment of Kabul may have been the opening
salvo. Indeed, who could ever point the finger at Americans now for using
that pejorative and sometimes racist word "terrorism''? Eight years
ago, I helped to make a television series that tried to explain why so
many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I remembered some of
those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by American-made bombs
and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them but God. Theology
versus technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear power. Now we
have learnt what this means.
Please post this article so that no all of us take the blame. As an Iranian
living in the west, yesterday my wife was spitted on and was attacked for
no reason simply becuase he looks like middle eastern.
It is the resposibility of people like you to condemn any act of terrorism
and educate people on what is going on so that people look at things more
rationally. You , me , and the rest of people living outside of our home
land should not be held responsible for the wrong doings of bunch of lunatic
fanatics who justify their actions under the name of Almighty.
