An Apology For War

the other side of 9/11

The heart of a people is often laid deep in the seeds of the fruits they grow. Open it up and you will see a history, a folklore written into the planes and angles of juicy colorful flesh, and you will hear a music you may or may not recognize. If you destroy the seeds a people saves, you destroy what's in their hearts. Today many of my countrymen and women are turning their attention to mournfully remembering the civilian deaths that were a result of the terrorist attack against the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

Every year, when this day rolls around I am made acutely uncomfortable by this lingering look at our losses when so much more and worse has happened since then. Every year as my people get in touch with their anger and their sorrow I feel like it is a dangerous idolatry, this memorializing of the dead made into a patriotic show. Personal sorrows were many and for each person I can understand remembrance. But every year it seems that people use this moment to justify war. "Remember all those people who died because of those heinous terrorists? It's a good thing we used that opportunity to invade a country that wasn't harboring the perpetrators of the crime because you know they are evil anyway..."

On this day seven years ago I heard the impossibly sad news about the twin towers and heard the death toll counts rising and I said to Philip "You realize this means we're going to war, don't you?" He agreed. I knew that our crooked president, if he wasn't somehow directly responsible for this heinous act itself, would absolutely use it as an excuse to go kill a whole lot of oil-hoarding evil Arab people.

What I kept thinking about was what impact all of these events must be having on the Arab-Americans in our own country. People with loved ones living in places that our government has vilified and then invaded, and then not seen fit to keep a death toll. We are a people made up of citizens from around the globe, a major part of our beauty lies in the people who have come to give us all the benefit of their cultural past, their perspective, their uniqueness, and to give us color.

The events of 9/11 must have had a tremendous impact on every American with a Mediterranean look to them. Going through the airports must have been hell, to be more scrutinized than other paler European-style faces had to have stung and felt like in injustice. What was it like to listen to people talking about Afghans like animals deserving to be executed? Afghanistan may be poor in the global economy but it is rich with history, with current vibrancy, and Americans didn't really care after 9/11.

The truth is that Americans didn't really care who had to die, just as long as someone paid for the deaths resulting from the crashing twin towers. Revenge is a very old past time and has not, even after thousands of years of seeking it, made anything better. It keeps our rivers full of bodies is all. We went looking for a fight the second we got the horrifying news. And when we couldn't find enough blood in Afghanistan we invaded Iraq because our President and all his evil men had our attention squarely set on the tragedy. "Keep people afraid and sad and they won't notice that we're invading a country we have no excuse to invade and even though no one else in the world would support us we are so righteous with God behind us...."

This is not a God directed war we've been waging. It's a political invasion and occupation. It can only end badly.

Once the evil was done and the death toll kept rising year after year I began to hear people say things like "We can't just leave Iraq now because we have to clean up our mess first." I have never heard such rubbish.

Let me ask you all this: If you had a plumber come to your house to fix a little leak, and he excavated and hammered at your pipes until all the plumbing in your house was broken and the water was gushing, the sewage sludging into your basement, even though when he arrived there had been but one small leak, would you consider this person qualified to clean up and fix the mess?

If you answered yes then you are deeply stupid.

So here we are. Seven years into war. A war we had no reasonable excuse to wage in the first place. The real terrorists were never caught but in the mean time we've managed to kill a shitload of Arabs, lose some more of our own people, deposed a leader, start a civil war, and one of the worst crimes we've committed? We've imposed rules on a people we have no right to impose anything on that have the potential to crush their heritage: we've made it illegal for any Iraqis farmers to save their seeds for harvest. They are required to buy their seeds from the United States, from our companies selling genetically modified seeds.

Like all true terrorists, we are attempting to rip out the hearts of an entire people.

This makes me sad beyond belief. I am sick inside with shame for my country. A country with the potential for greatness squandering all its chances on wars it should not fight and cannot win. I am ashamed at how hard it is to find out how many Iraqis we've killed, because if you're going to kill people you should be accountable for it. Our own laws support this. God supposedly agrees. Jesus doesn't even think we should kill at all.

If we're going to mourn everyone who died as a result of the attack on the twin towers then we need to also mourn for all the people who have died as a result of our seeking retribution. Americans love to print the numbers of American soldiers who've died so there's no problem keeping track of our beloved own (which undoubtedly includes plenty of Arab-Americans who have ties to Iraq, what a mind fuck that must be!) and so the total number of American lost (including the Twin Towers incident) is: 7,443 American people. *

I had to check a lot of sources, many no longer current, but it seems that if you average out the estimates available (which vary widely) everyone can pretty much agree that at least 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war, a huge majority of those civilians. Men, women, and children not in the military.

Women and children. The United States has a hell of a fucking lot to answer for. How many of these civilians were related to American tax paying citizens? Should we not also be honoring the loss of these people? People who did us no harm.


What I want to know is: When will we decide that we've killed enough?

Our government has done this in our name, sullying all kinds of other names in the process such as "God", "Justice", and the most laughable of all "Freedom".

I'm not going to throw rocks at our troops who, having enlisted in a job in which there is no room for freedom of opinion, have been doing what they promised to do which is doing what they're told. I don't respect what they're doing because killing people under any circumstance besides urgent self defense, is to me, indefensible and a crime. I don't care what flag anyone is carrying. I don't care what color your skin is. I don't care who you pray to. Killing is wrong. But bring our troops home. I will not harass them nor bring them down.

We've killed at least one hundred thousand Iraqi people.

We've become the Nazi's to Jewish people.** We just haven't reached the same death toll yet. Is that what it will take? Do we need to kill 6,000,000 men, women, and children before we see that what we're doing is wrong? That what we've done is invaded another country, oppressed them, killed their people-innocent people, and decided that we have some "right" to be there? What will it take for us to take our actions seriously and demand, as a country, that our tyranny over Iraq end?

I thought we viewed dictatorships as evil. We are the worst dictatorship of all right now.

So tonight I am sending out my apologies to the dead and the families they have left to mourn. I'm so sorry that my country has committed these heinous crimes against you. I'm so sorry that my country, of which I am a part, has smeared the blood of your innocent children (who resemble so many of our children) across the streets with grenades and bombs. I'm so sorry we've put laws in motion that could destroy your gorgeous and ancient heritage, family stories, and indigenous crops that you have grown for centuries.

I'm so sorry. If I could depose Emperor Bush and prevent his evil brethren from taking charge when he steps down, I would. If I could undo this stench of death in your country, I would. I am but one person. Please, please know that not all Americans are blood thirsty self righteous butchers. Please know that some of us think on your loss and wish we could send you back the seeds of your heart. Some of us wish we could open the universal rivers to share food, conversation, laughter, cultural understanding and enlightenment.

Tonight, while my country remembers the 2,974 people who died from the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I am remembering the 100, 000 we have so far killed in an effort to make ourselves feel better.

My shame is deep and complete. Please forgive us.

**I am 100% aware of the gravity of such a statement. I stand by it. What we're doing in Iraq is slaughtering innocent people. It's what Hitler did to not only Jewish people but to all people who opposed him. I do believe that there is a deep racism in my country against people of Arab heritage and it is no different than Adolf's prejudice against jewish people. I'm was horrified to hear a relative of mine call someone a "raghead" once and until then I actually didn't realize there were derrogative words for Arabic people because in my circles people have few racial prejudices.