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CHAPTER TEN
A MEMO TO OURSELVES
Even as the people of Afghanistan
contemplate
their future,
it might be a good time for us to take
stock of ourselves,
who we are and what we
represent.
We seem to believe that if the
inhabitants of the
Muslim
communities only got to know us better, and
what
we stand for, that they would understand us
and embrace
us.
That
may be so, but it can cut both ways.
How
much do we know about the rest of the world
in general,
and that area in particular, that we didn’t
learn until
after September 11? How many of us
knew where these
countries are, or really cared, in
spite of the fact that,
as we have seen, we ignore
them to our detriment and
sorrow?
We
claim to be educated but had never heard of
Bosnia,
Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan until
a terrible
crisis occurred. We learn about Scotland
from “Braveheart”,
about Rome from “The
Gladiators”, about
Greece from “Zorba”, and we
assume familiarity.
So
why do we study Geography in our schools if
we
cannot
pinpoint half the world on a map? Why
study
History
if it is only our own and gives no
insight into
the
mindset of those with whom we share
the planet?
The
print media report regularly on happenings
elsewhere,
but the man in the street today gets most
of
his
information from television news channels, and
in
order
to make any situation easier for us to
understand,
they often bring things down to the
lowest
common denominator.
Perhaps,
if we understood others a little more, we
would
embrace them, too.
Of
course, I am not referring to the terrorists
among
them. There is not a people on God’s earth
which
openly
advocates terrorism as a matter of
policy. I
refer
to the ordinary person, in any country,
anywhere.
But
we, like it or not, have our own terrorists, who
are
as
capable of doing terrible evil as those abroad.
Ask
any victim of the IRA in Ireland, the ETA in
Spain,
the Tim McVeigh in the USA.
Evil
does not always wear a turban. Sometimes it
wears
a white sheet and a pointed hood.
But
it is always the result of ignorance, of fear of
the
unknown,
and we are as susceptible as anyone
else. It is
easy to ridicule and condemn what we
don’t
understand,
and all sides are equally guilty of
that.
We
wonder at the mentality of those who are so
narrow in
their
beliefs, and so terribly paranoid
about them that
they
shun day-to-day discourse
with the ordinary man
and
hide themselves away in
caves to avoid serious contact
with those who do
not agree with their beliefs. Who
arm
themselves
to
the teeth against whatever perceived
enemy may
intrude
on their lifestyle.
And
yet we too have our paranoid groups, heavily
armed
and
hiding out in mountain enclaves,
constantly
searching
the sky for black helicopters
and waiting for
an
apocalypse that never comes.
They
have their suicide bombers, their people
willing to
make
the ultimate sacrifice for their often
convoluted
beliefs, but so do we. Remember
Jonestown,
Heaven’s
Gate,
et al?
It is said that “a
cause is not necessarily true, just
because
a man is prepared to die for it.”*
We
condemn those who use fundamentalism as an
excuse
for
inciting hatred, but we have our
fundamentalists too.
We
have preachers who are as intolerant as any to
be
found
elsewhere; who preach hate and
divisiveness as so many
fundamentalists
do; and
always in the name of God.
We
bemoan the tribalism that generates so much
discord
while
we ourselves have our own ethnic
divisions, our own
biases and prejudices, our own
epithets. We
paint in broad
strokes
and it is not
always a pretty picture.
And
yet, with all our faults, we are basically good
people,
trying our best in a less than perfect world
to do
the right thing. But, in order to be equitable,
we
must
be fair, and honest with ourselves.
We
do not have a patent on Morality, only the
strength
that comes from being a powerful country
among
many weaker ones, and the courage to hold
out
our
hand to our fellow man, regardless of how
different
he
may be from ourselves, and the
willingness to
encourage
him to his own greatness,
in his own way.
To
the far-off people in far-off places, let us lead
by
our
example. We are all citizens of one globe, and
it is
the
very diversity of our peoples that enriches
us and
gives
us dignity.
We
offer with pride, but not hubris, our best and
brightest
minds and our warmest hearts to help the
suffering
people of Afghanistan take the first steps
along
a path that we have long since trodden, and as
we
look back at what we have achieved let us also
look
forward
with confidence to a time of peace and
prosperity, for all God’s creatures.
For
them, and for ourselves.
* Nietsche
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