an eye for an eye

[barbara100 at jps.net]

The 'upshot'? How about the 'end result'? That's what gets me.  Give it all
the high-minded analyses you want, in the end it's the same broken and
battered bodies.  They're not just 3,700 or 6,000 or 6,000,000, they're real
people like you and me. Something Doug posted about Noor Muhammad (today I
think)--did you read it?  There's a boy, an Afghan boy who got his eyes and
arms blown off. A fate worse than death. Reading it made my stomach ache.
Writing it now does too. "What if that was me?," I ask myself. "God!...What
if it was my kid!" That's when I start screaming inside, "Are we fucking
crazy doing that to people?!" Don't lecture me about REASON, Quail.  I have
all the reason I need in my gut.  And you do too, no matter how hard you try
to think above it.  It's not enough to say the world is messy and
unforgiving.  It's not enough. It's only messy and unforgiving so much as we
allow it.  You and me and the whole lot of us. But it always has to start
with you.

About my dinner guests, though, Richard Romeo--rest assured, they don't get
to see my best side like you all do here.  I gave it a little try today,
though, at a division holiday luncheon. We played a game where we wrote our
favorite book and other pertinent information on a card, pinned it to our
lapel, then set out to meet five people we didn't "know very well."  Fun,
huh?  What do you suppose I wrote as my favorite book? Gravity's Rainbow,
you guessed it! None of my five people ever heard of it, though. It was
rather disappointing. You ever felt alone in a crowded room? Yeah,
well...And silly me, I came here to the P-List thinking it would be a haven
of like-minded individuals.  Ha! Look how that's turned out!  But, no,
Richard, to answer your question, people in my everyday real life don't hate
me.  You make me wonder though--maybe they just don't know me well enough.
Hmmm...

Barbara


----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Romeo <richardromeo at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 5:25 PM
Subject: an eye for an eye


> A case can be made as well, and has been, that Israel's so-called
> assassinations of Palestinian terrorists differ from the suicide bomber s
in
> that civilians are not the targets, though civilians are killed by Israeli
> forces in the process of those assassinations. The upshot is pretty much
the
> same, but the intentions I suspect are important too.
> It's not an easy policy to feel whole-heartidly for, I admit.
> But the world is a messy, unforgiving place.
>
> Rich
>
>
> >From: "barbara100 at jps.net" <barbara100 at jps.net>
> >Reply-To: barbara100 at jps.net
> >To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: RE: RE: Selective Memory
> >Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 17:02:37 -0500
> >
> >Dude, the end of Toby Levy's post quoted Ghandi's, "An eye for an eye
makes
> >the whole world blind." It was his post and Ghandi's remark that
motivated
> >me to go fetch the Report from Democracy Now! for you all to see. If the
> >comment fits, use it!
> >Don't take your guilt out on me...
> >
> >
>
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