Crumble an’ Erb St column: Sept 14, 2001

by Greg Macdougall – Sept 14, 2001 | University of Waterloo Imprint (page 12)

You can call it the most terrible thing that has ever happened; you can call it pure evil; you can call it karma.

What goes around comes around, some people say. And on 09/11, the big bully on the playground, the U.S., got sacked in the nuts. The question now is how will they react?

Yes, there’s also a lot to deal with coming to terms with what happened: the horror, the sadness, the fear, the anger. How can you deal with all that?

The easy way is to hit back, hard, and that’s what people seem to want: ‘Kill the bastards!’ As horrible as Tuesday was, I’m more scared of what’s to come. Not from more terrorist attacks -contrary to a lot of people, I don’t feel any less safe today than before the attacks – but from the devastation and horror that people’s reactions could unleash on the world.

I think that the only way a good reaction can come is if we’ve dealt with the emotions that come from this, which is very different from acting on those emotions. And if we’ve made an effort to understand what happened and why. When I see Bush talking of America’s “quiet, unyielding anger” and how the attacks “cannot dent the steel of American resolve,” I feel more sick than I did watching a person free falling from one of the towers.

As we condemn the terrorists to hell, are we going to follow them? Is the current president the man to take the high road, or is he going to lead us on a downward spiral of violence begetting violence?

I’ve heard this attack being likened to Pearl Harbour, but I haven’t heard anyone mentioning what the States’ reaction to that attack was -two atomic bombs dropped on another country, killing how many more people and contributing how much more senseless violence?

Bush claimed that “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” He seems to have missed the fact that, for many, America symbolizes the exact opposite: the repression of freedom. By attacking the crowning symbol of America’s capitalistic might and the heart of America’s military might, a very clear message was being sent.

The personal hatred I hold for American imperialism and militarism gave way to many mixed feelings in witnessing what went on. The hatred that we all hold in our hearts, directed wherever it may be, means that we cannot outright condemn others, ‘foreigners,’ and hold ourselves to be above them. We cannot fall into the trap of thinking that we are good and they are bad. Only by recognizing our own shadow, as Carl Jung called it, can we hope to come to some resolution.

The American shadow is a dark one. For example, they originally backed Osama bin Laden, who they and the media now portray as the face of evil incarnate (without anyone having a clue as to who did all this). Twenty years ago, the United States was training bin Laden and supplying him with arms in his terrorist fight against the Soviets.

The hypocritical nature of the rhetoric spouting from Bush’s mouth, and coming from all the journalists, editors, and opinion columnists creating hatred and hysteria in people’s minds, makes me as sick as the actual act itself.

I also note how ‘good’ this is to Bush and his presidency in so many ways. Everyone is united behind him; all the bad things he has done are gone from people’s minds. As has been noted many times before, a war is sometimes the best medicine for an ailing leader.

However, I hold out some hope that maybe some good will come of this. Maybe this will be a big enough of a shock to people that they change the way they view their lives, the way they relate to other people, the way they live their lives. This is a chance for us to stop ignoring the hatred that is endemic in the world, and to instead acknowledge it while at the same time looking to let love overcome it.

I was once told that all action comes either from love or from fear. I have to ask, where does revenge fit in there?

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