What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Big blast reported in North Korea. A big explosion rocked a northern province of North Korea last week, South Korean media are reporting. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]
Well, what can be said?

Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying a mushroom cloud, with a radius of 3.5-4 kms (2.2-2.5 miles), was spotted in Kimhyungjik county in Yanggang province.
...
The blast is said to have happened on 9 September, as North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding.

11:28:24 PM leave/read comments []

I believe the photo is from the A.P. wire.

Bush lied; people died.

Indeed.

And on this day I find myself asking, "what makes us different from the 9/11 hijackers?"

In the minds of Islamic extremists they are doing nothing more than fighting to protect a way of life that is as dear and as precious to them as democracy and consumerism and freedom of expression is to Western society.

They are so frightened that their way of life, their very existence, is going to be crushed by the wheels of global capitalism that they are willing to take desperate measures to try to prevent that from happening.

Are they really that different from you or I? Are you willing to kill to preserve that which is precious to you? Maybe the question we should ask is "are you so frightened that you will kill your enemy, your enemy's children and yourself?"

Because that's what "justifies" killing. Fear. And as long as we can imagine that other people are something less than human, something that isn't motivated by fear and passion, then the killing will go on and on and on.

Fear comes from ignorance and fear comes from being unable to understand the basic humanity of everyone. And fear is used as a tool by those who seek power and influence.

Bush lied. We were made to fear Saddam. People died.

When lives are in the balance, is there a greater crime than to use fear to mis-lead others to their deaths?

FDR was right, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself- because fear is more than just a mind-killer, it's a soul killer- it makes a man or a woman forget what it mean to be human and it's in those horrible moments of all-consuming fear that terrible deeds of inhumanity are done. We should remember that some of those acts are committed from behind a desk, just as surely as they have been committed in the cockpit of an airplane.

I asked what makes us different, and I guess the easy answer would have something to do with a view of where authority comes from and who may wield it and the place of women in society, but maybe the more valuable question is what is it that allowed so many to be so mis-led that killing someone's children was the only solution tried?

10:58:44 PM leave/read comments []