I was talking to one of my co-workers yesterday about this, and her final word on the topic was, "I want them all killed." Maybe the reason I find that so chilling is the word "all." I hear historical echoes--"Kill them all, let God sort them out." "Kill them all, big and small, nits will be lice." When I hear people calling for retribution for this, the way they image it is so often global and indiscriminating--usually via either conventional or nuclear bombs. The fact that any such retaliation will certainly involve the deaths of many, many civilians who are just as innocent as the people who died in New York and DC disappears, obscured by the bright nuclear glow of revenge. The footage of celebrating Palestinians that was broadcast nationally in what I think was a serious error of judgment on the part of the networks has had the eminently foreseeable effect of provoking yet even more generalized anti-Arab sentiment. The "bomb them all" reaction seems to be a pretty compelling fantasy for the people who share it. I don't know why it is exactly that I don't share this fantasy; but I just can't.
I don't want blood for this. I don't care whose blood it is, I don't want any more of it. This is enough. Part of my anger and grief over this is the knowledge that the destruction won't stop here; that in DC the only option currently being considered is escalation. Whatever about what I want, I know what I'm getting: more force, more bombing, more collateral damage. What I'm afraid of is that all that will accomplish is another strike against us that will be bigger and worse than what happened on Tuesday. I can't really imagine what would be bigger and worse than that; but I feel like if we keep going in this direction, we are unfortunately bound to find out.
What frightens me most about what's happening now is what I see as a narrowing of the spectrum of allowable opinions. I've seen people viciously flamed for suggesting that America's foreign policy may have led indirectly to this kind of consequence, by people who assumed that to criticize America's government at a time like this is tantamount to rejoicing in the deaths in NYC and DC. Because I believe that the willingness to be critical of America's own actions is absolutely necessary to understanding and hopefully ending the cycle of violence into which we have been thrown, it scares me to see that happen. What I'm afraid of is that soon, genocidal rage will be the only socially acceptable response to this tragedy. And since I don't think genocidal rage is going to get us out of this, I really don't want it to become the only available response.
Already in the Chicago area there are reports of anti-Arab violence or threatened violence-- a march on a mosque, a Molotov cocktail that failed to explode, a man who attacked a person he believed to be of Arab descent with the blunt end of a machete. We'll be lucky if this is as bad as it gets. Since the Pearl Harbor comparisons are already out there, other people have pointed out that our response to that attack was to round up Japanese-Americans and intern them in concentration camps until the war was over. I don't think that'll happen this time. No, we'll do it the way the British have been doing it in Northern Ireland: widespread police harassment, internment without trial, the passage of legislation that allows us to suspend the human rights of people who are suspected of being involved in terrorist activity. And, as in Northern Ireland, it won't solve the problem.
I don't really have a way to end this. Closure is a scarce commodity in America these days. I keep hoping that the good things that we've heard about our response to this tragedy--all the people who have endangered themselves to help others, the massive lines for blood donations, the thousands of tiny ways in which people have shown that danger makes us more human and humane instead of less--will be what wins, and that America will take the high road. But what I hope for and what happens, when it comes to America, are usually not the same thing. Let us all hope for peace and healing for those who have been affected by this horrible thing, and that this time it turns out that I'm wrong.
Yours in sorrow,
The Plaid Adder Wanna see last week's critique? Go here.
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