*tears*

[Guest guest]

Will Tears Ever Stop?

By John Gerassi

 

I can't help crying. As soon as I see a person on TV telling the

heart-rendering story of the tragic fate of their loved-one in the World

Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears. But then I wonder why

didn't I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor people in

Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of looking for Noriega.

Our leaders knew he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo

because the folks living there were nationalists who wanted the U.S. out

of Panama completely.

 

Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two million Vietnamese,

mostly innocent peasants, in a war which its main architect, Defense

Secretary Robert McNamara, knew we could not win? When I went to give

blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three up in

the line, and that reminded me: Why didn't I cry when we helped Pol Pot

butcher another million by giving him arms and money, because he was

opposed to " our enemy " (who eventually stopped the killing fields)?

 

To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I chose

Lumumba, at the Film Forum, and again I realized that I hadn't cried

when our government arranged for the murder of the Congo's only decent

leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu, a greedy, vicious, murdering

dictator. Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of

Indonesia's Sukarno, who had fought the Japanese World War II invaders

and established a free independent country, and then replaced him by

another General, Suharto, who had collaborated with the Japanese and who

proceeded to execute at least half a million " Marxists " (in a country

where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)?

 

I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of that

wonderful now-missing father playing with his two-month old child. Yet

when I remembered the slaughter of thousands of Salvadorans, so

graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner, or the rape and murder

of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated by CIA

trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I heard

how brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, whose

political views I detested. But I didn't cry when the US invaded that

wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada and killed innocent citizens

who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist airfield, which my

government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished building

once the island was secure in the US camp again.

 

Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister,

planned, then ordered, the massacre of two thousand poor Palestinians in

the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the same Sharon who, with such

other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists become prime ministers as Begin

and Shamir, killed the wives and children of British officers by blowing

up the King David hotel where they were billeted?

 

I guess one only cries only for one's own. But is that a reason to

demand vengeance on anyone who might disagree with us? That's what

Americans seem to want. Certainly our government oes, and so too most of

our media. Do we really believe that we have a right to exploit the poor

folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and they

are not?

 

So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go after

those who killed so many of our innocent brothers and sisters. And we'll

win, of course. Against Bin Laden. Against Taliban. Against Iraq.

Against whoever and whatever. In the process we'll kill a few innocent

children again. Children who have no clothes for the coming winter. No

houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at

two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and Robertson

will claim their death is good because they weren't Christians, and

maybe some State Department spokesperson will tell the world that they

were so poor that they're now better off.

 

And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want to?

With all the new legislation establishing massive surveillance of you

and me, our CEOs will certainly be pleased that the folks demonstrating

against globalization will now be cowed for ever. No more riots in

Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last.

 

Until next time. Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived our

massacre of his innocent parents in El Chorillo? A Nicaraguan girl who

learned that her doctor mother and father were murdered by a bunch of

gangsters we called democratic contras who read in the CIA handbook that

the best way to destroy the only government which was trying to give the

country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers, health personnel,

and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a bitter Chilean who is

convinced that his whole family was wiped out on order of Nixon's

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who could never tell the difference

between a communist and a democratic socialist or even a nationalist.

 

When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run the

world for the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer someone's revenge?

No war will ever stop terrorism as long as we use terror to have our

way. So I stopped crying because I stopped watching TV. I went for a

walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd had congregated to lay

flowers and lit candles in front of our local firehouse. It was closed.

It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen, a wonderful bunch

of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks with smiles and

good cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower

that they perished with them when it collapsed. And I cried again.

 

So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it; some of your

students, colleagues, neighbors will hate you, maybe even harm you. But

then I put on the TV again, and there was Secretary of State Powell

telling me that it will be okay to go to war against these children,

these poor folks, these US-haters, because we are civilized and they are

not. So I decided to risk it. Maybe, reading this, one more person will

ask: Why are so many people in the world ready to die to give us a taste

of what we give them?