some thoughts on day 1

[rhaenda]

Measurement is at the heart of MD, Measurement and Geomancy, the reduction
of the world by containing terra incognita within known and surveyed
frontiers.    McLuhan noted that the satellite made nature obsolete.  He
meant that satellite images showed clearly that all great and mysterious
Wildernesses, no matter how large, were bounded and contained.  The world
has been made smaller by violent attacks on the United States, measured by
blood and terror.

Despite the commonly expressed view that Americans believe themselves to
live in safe havens, we understand the effects of war, Arne, over here in
America.  We know what it is like to lose brothers and friends and enemies
in places like Khe San and Da Nang and Riyadh and Oklahoma City and Omaha
Beach and Okanawa and Shiloh and Antietam, The Cowpens, The Brandywine, The
Alamo, New Orleans, Wounded Knee, Little Big Horn, Pearl Harbor, and New
York.  We're a violent place shaped by our roots in War and our numerous
wars on ourselves and our neighbors.

Denmark is a very nice place and I'm sure you meant well by saying that
violence as a response to violence has its flaws.  But Measure your Words
these days and be aware of the Lines they cut.  Please don't lecture us
about dealing with our enemies:  We have lost more dead in one day than at
anytime since the Normandy Invasion.  This time, they were not soldiers,
sailors, airmen, or marines but civilian men, women, and children.  We learn
today that there may have been hundred of British citizens and Europeans,
there were large numbers of Australians, and Japanese and Indonesians and
Africans and Arabs and Israelis in the World--note the word Arne-- World
Trade Centers.

We are a large country here, Arne, but everyone knows someone who lives or
lived in New York and before it is over, everyone on the planet will know
someone who died on Monday in far fewer than six degrees of separation.

As for learning from the past,  we have learned that allowing madmen to
accumulate power and to commit heinous crimes without retribution only
encourages them.  We are at War now and so may be Denmark.  War changes
everything including how people react to well-intentioned advice.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arne Herløv Petersen" <herlahp at inet.uni2.dk>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: some thoughts on day 1


> 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).