NP Will Tears Ever Stop?

Richard Romeo richardromeo at hotmail.com
Tue Sep 25 19:19:22 CDT 2001


I can see now some MTV starlet singing such smug self-righteous mush--it's 
embarrassing, no different from the flag waving, music video news reportage.

Rich
>
>I can't help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV
>telling the
>heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their
>loved-one in the World
>Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears. But
>then I wonder why
>didn't I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor
>people in
>Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of
>looking for Noriega.
>Our leaders knew he was hiding elsewhere but we
>destroyed El Chorillo
>because the folks living there were nationalists who
>wanted the U.S. out
>of Panama completely.
>
>Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two
>million Vietnamese,
>mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main
>architect, Defense
>Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not win? When
>I went to give
>blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the
>same, three up in
>the line, and that reminded me: Why didn't I cry when
>we helped Pol Pot
>butcher another million by giving him arms and money,
>because he was
>opposed to "our enemy" (who eventually stopped the
>killing fields)?
>
>To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go
>to a movie. I chose
>Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized that
>I hadn't cried
>when our government arranged for the murder of the
>Congo's only decent
>leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu, a greedy,
>vicious, murdering
>dictator. Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the
>overthrow of
>Indonesia's Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World
>War II invaders
>and established a free independent country, and then
>replaced him by
>another General, Suharto, who had collaborated with
>the Japanese and who
>proceeded to execute at least half a million
>"Marxists" (in a country
>where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best
>Groucho)?
>
>I watched TV again last night and cried again at the
>picture of that
>wonderful now-missing father playing with his
>two-month old child. Yet
>when I remembered the slaughter of thousands of
>Salvadorans, so
>graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner, or
>the rape and murder
>of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all
>perpetrated by CIA
>trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even
>cried when I heard
>how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the
>Solicitor General, whose
>political views I detested. But I didn't cry when the
>US invaded that
>wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada and killed
>innocent citizens
>who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist
>airfield, which my
>government called proof of a Russian base, but then
>finished building
>once the island was secure in the US camp again.
>
>Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's
>prime minister,
>planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand
>poor Palestinians in
>the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the same
>Sharon who, with such
>other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists become prime
>ministers as Begin
>and Shamir, killed the wives and children of British
>officers by blowing
>up the King David hotel where they were billeted?
>
>I guess one only cries only for one's own. But is that
>a reason to
>demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree with us?
>That's what
>Americans seem to want. Certainly our government oes,
>and so too most of
>our media. Do we really believe that we have a right
>to exploit the poor
>folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we
>are free and they
>are not?
>
>So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly
>entitled to go after
>those who killed so many of our innocent brothers and
>sisters. And we'll
>win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against Taliban.
>Against Iraq.
>Against whoever and whatever. In the process we'll
>kill a few innocent
>children again. Children who have no clothes for the
>coming winter. No
>houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why
>they are guilty, at
>two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists
>Falwell and Robertson
>will claim their death is good because they weren't
>Christians, and
>maybe some State Department spokesperson will tell the
>world that they
>were so poor that they're now better off.
>
>And then what? Will we now be able to run the world
>the way we want to?
>With all the new legislation establishing massive
>surveillance of you
>and me, our CEOs will certainly be pleased that the
>folks demonstrating
>against globalization will now be cowed for ever. No
>more riots in
>Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last.
>
>Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up
>who survived our
>massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo? A
>Nicaraguan girl who
>learned that her doctor mother and father were
>murdered by a bunch of
>gangsters we called democratic contras who read in the
>CIA handbook that
>the best way to destroy the only government which was
>trying to give the
>country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers,
>health personnel,
>and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a
>bitter Chilean who is
>convinced that his whole family was wiped out on order
>of Nixon's
>Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who could never
>tell the difference
>between a communist and a democratic socialist or even
>a nationalist.
>
>When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep
>trying to run the
>world for the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer
>someone's revenge?
>No war will ever stop terrorism as long as we use
>terror to have our
>way. So I stopped crying because I stopped watching
>TV. I went for a
>walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd had
>congregated to lay
>flowers and lit candles in front of our local
>firehouse. It was closed.
>It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen,
>a wonderful bunch
>of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks
>with smiles and
>good cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of
>the first tower
>that they perished with them when it collapsed. And I
>cried again.
>
>So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it;
>some of your
>students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe
>even harm you. But
>then I put on the TV again, and there was Secretary of
>State Powell
>telling me that it will be okay to go to war against
>these children,
>these poor folks, these US-haters, because we are
>civilized and they are
>not. So I decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one
>more person will
>ask: Why are so many people in the world ready to die
>to give us a taste
>of what we give them?
>
>--distributed by Znet
>
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