some thoughts on day 1

[Arne Herl�v Petersen]

MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I don't know if being here in New York and seeing firsthand (being unable to
> avoid) the carnage is the significant difference, but I find these posts
> arguing the politics of the event little short of repulsive.
> 

The horror you see now has been seen by people in other countries. You
have been spared until now. You are no longer safe. Welcome to the
world.
After World War II most people here in Denmark wanted to hang all Nazis.
Many people hated all Germans. Some even wanted to string up the Nazis
without due process. The few people who argued for the voice of reason
and said that if you chose to use Nazi methods, the Nazis won - then
their methods were accepted, then you became a Nazi yourself - were
mostly ridiculed and condemned as traitors or "softies".
Recently there has been a lot of soul searching. People have realized
that the resistance fighters were not only heroes, but also committed
atrocious acts, that it was sheer barbarism to shave the heads of girls
whose only crime was that they had fallen in love with a young man in
the wrong uniform.
If your (understandable) cries for revenge now make you abandon all the
principles our civilization stand for, the terrorists will have won
their most important victory.
All people of good will feel deeply with you and condemn categorically
this monstrous crime. There are different opinions about what to learn
from this, though. I am just suggesting that it might be a good idea to
listen to the experience of people who have been through the wars and
crimes against humanity of the past century.
If you feel that repulsive, so be it.
People who are unable to learn from the past, are condemned to repeat
it. (As you might realize in an Afghani quagmire).