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A Moment of Respect

I was just as shocked as anybody to find out about the explosions in London. It hit me pretty close to home, though, because I've walked those streets and ridden on the buses and the tube. London felt like a second home to me while I lived there, and its always difficult to learn something disasterous has happened at home. It reminded me in a small way of the feeling I got when, in an extremely remote area of the Philippines where I was the only American for miles, I found out about 9/11.

It hurts me to see what hatred and intolerance can do. Man's capacity to destroy himself is a painful concept to see acted out at the cost of innocent lives. No doubt we will only see more violence in the years to come, for violence begets violence in a terrible cycle. I only pray the pain we feel at being attacked doesn't turn us into the very thing we are fighting. The last five years have given us new meaning to the word "tragic."

Comments

Anonymous said…
With all due respect, I wonder about your worrying that we turn into the "very thing we're fighting." London and the USA are vast gulfs away from the anonymous, brutal, surprise attacks targeting innocent victims that 21st Century terrorism is. Our greatest fear should be whether or not we can pull together as a country and world, defending striking this evil at the heart.
7/09/2005 2:13 AM
Matt Haws said…
I never meant to imply that the US or the UK are in danger of becoming terrorists, or that we should not try to protect ourselves from attack. I ask those who may have misunderstood to forgive me if that is the impression that I gave.

What I meant to say is simply this: the pain we feel at being attacked can turn to hatred, and we cannot give into hatred, or else we may defeat the terrorists but lose who we are. It is hatred that drives the terrorists to do what they do; hatred and a complete disregard for rule of law. We should not give into hatred and we should at all times and in all places uphold rule of law like the civilized nation we are. I am concerned by the growing number of Americans who think that we should wipe out Muslims, enact racial profiling, and ignore international and US laws and norms in our attempts to defend ourselves. We must be careful. The ends do not justify the means. We are not terrorists.

That's all I'm saying.
7/09/2005 9:36 PM
Anonymous said…
I don't want to belittle the grave nature of this posting, but if I could add something. We're dealing with people who live at a tribal level. The only way we're going to win is if we can show them that we're willing to go farther than they are. Syria stopped a Terrorist problem it had by destorying an entire city. Britiain stopped Terrorist insurgents when it was still a colonial power by dipping their bullets in pig fat which would mean any Muslim shot by a British gun would go to Hell, not heaven as he hoped by his sacrifice. Now, there's no way that America can do the first, and if America does the second, the uproar over the Guantanamo Bay Quran desecrations would be nothing compared to the uproar. So, in short, since we can't go farther in our kinder gentler world, we can't win. It'll be another Vietnam where since we're not playing to win, there's nothing left but losing.
7/12/2005 1:25 PM
Matt Haws said…
If you accept that the only way to win is to kill everybody who wants to do us harm, then yes we can't win.
7/12/2005 4:41 PM
Anonymous said…
Come on, the Bard. That simplisitic over-generalization is a cop out. You know that's not what I said or meant. I'm just stating the difficulties. Read "From Beirut to Lebanon" by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times Foreign Correspondent--a Liberal like you--and he states the same difficulties. You know, living in a highly conservative area for a liberal is a lot like being a hammer--soon everything looks like a nail, or every comment looks like a warmongering redneck's.
7/16/2005 11:29 AM
Matt Haws said…
I love you Janky
7/16/2005 8:30 PM
Anonymous said…
I was waiting to be disarmed like that! Back at ya.
7/17/2005 12:40 AM
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