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| "Pacific
Currents"
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference
Minister, November, 2001 IT'S THE DISSONANCE...
It's the dissonance. The
disharmony and incongruity between deed
and response, between reaction and reality
are getting to me. I'm writing on Tuesday,
October 23. The news of postal workers dead
from anthrax has just been released. Acts
of terror have now gone beyond the massive
devastation of September 11, and have not
only laid hold to our imaginations but insinuated
their way into our lungs, unseen and untreated.
Hordes of B-1's will not protect us from
airborne toxins. Nor will bombing raids
bring an end to terrorism. The pursuit of terrorists may well be a worldwide act of self defense for the human race. But in that pursuit, we must separate terrorists from people dwelling in the same land as the terrorists; we must distinguish governments from the governed. If our military destroys their loved ones, their neighbors, their country-people who had no part in the attacks, then we will have acted in the same manner as the terrorists who killed or visited bereavement upon the thousands who were in the World Trade Center six weeks ago and those who loved them. Muslim and Christian theologians, experts on terrorism and on the Middle East all give the same advice. But I fear that our nation is focused elsewhere, getting tripped up in the knotty rhetoric of war, flexing strong and well-used muscles when new stretches of ingenuity are called for. Retaliation by means of air strikes or ground forces trained for combat with an identifiable enemy will snare and destroy noncombatants and non-terrorists, and may very well leave the scattered and fugitive al Qaeda untouched. The Pentagon-and Timothy McVeigh-have used the term "collateral damage" to refer to the unfortunate and unintended loss of lives in the march toward victory. "Collateral" death is "accessory," "added," "coincident"-but the extermination of life is every bit as irrevocable. "America Strikes Back" is a banner that calls up visions of U.S. agents unleashing anthrax in Kabul, and leveling Kandahar and Mazar-I-Sharif in a bombastic effort to approximate the loss of life in New York and Washington. The first title chosen for the U.S. military raids on Afghanistan was "Operation Infinite Justice." The name was quickly discarded when advisors pointed out that it would be offensive to Muslims, for whom God alone is understood to be capable of infinite justice. I hope that the advisors were aware that the term should be equally as offensive to Jews and Christians. "You alone can proclaim justice," the Psalmist asserts to the Almighty. On a September day over 35 years ago I stood transfixed in front of a grainy TV screen and received my introduction to terrorism. A church in Birmingham, Alabama, had been bombed on a Sunday morning and 4 girls were killed. Denise MacNair was one of them. Her father was interviewed by TV reporters. There was a flurry of questions. "Do you want to see your daughter's killers brought to justice? Do you hate all white people for what these men did? Will you seek the death penalty for them if they are found?" Mr. MacNair spoke to the heart of the matter from the heart of his pain and his convictions: Of course I want the killers brought to justice-who could bear to leave them free to do this again? But their deaths will not bring our children back to life. The only way we could inflict upon them the suffering we are enduring would be to kill their children-and then truly we would all have gone mad. Let us, I pray, not embrace the madness
of retaliation. Those who have demonstrated
willingness to use human beings as missiles
and to die themselves in the wreaking of
disaster are not likely to be moved or affected
by our demonstrations of force against their
compatriots. Let us use our vast resources
to pinpoint and displace by tweezers, if
necessary, those who plan and carry out
acts of terror. Let our government hasten
to screen and treat all who have been exposed
to anthrax and build up our public health
networks. Let us be vigilant to anticipate
and thwart future acts of terror. Let our
reactions go beyond the satisfyingly reflexive
to the creatively effective. As for justice:
~ Mary Susan For previous editions of "Pacific Currents", click here. | ||
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