Please help me think this through...

EVERETT813 at aol.com EVERETT813 at aol.com
Thu Jul 1 23:11:50 PDT 2004


In a message dated 7/1/04 8:45:07 AM, 76066.515 at compuserve.com writes:


> What would happen if the USA would apologize to the people of Iraq for the
> invasion and the atrocities done by us or under our watch? What is the
> likely result if we would make sincere efforts to make amends? Even to dare
> to vulnerably make amends?
>
> Some would surely say it will be viewed as weakness, as an admission of
> defeat. But it takes a strong people to make an apology, yes?
>
> Is this not a form of griefwork?
>
> What do the learnings of open space do to help us think this through? What
> would warriors for peace do?
>

Dear Doug,

To whom would we apologize?   To the Sunni's and Baathists for dethroning
them so they can no longer terrorize, kill with impunity and subjugate the
Shi'ites and Kurds, not to mention continue the ecological disaster of draining the
marshes and destroying the way of life of the Marsh People's?   Not to mention
the systematic killing of other minorities such as the Gypsies.

Do we apologize to the Shi'ites for freeing them from that subjugation and
enabling them to go on their Haj, self-flagellating themselves, as is their
religious custom which they have not been able to practice since Saddam came to
power?   Do we apologize to them for creating the possibility of sharing, truly
sharing, power with the other peoples of Iraq, such as the Kurds, Marsh
People, Sunni's, etc. so that they might eventually prosper when those fighting to
establish the old regime are defeated?

Do we apologize to the Kurds of the north who now have the possibility of
creating a viable state within a larger Iraq (maybe like Texas in the United
States) that will enable them to live in relative peace while still part of the
larger whole?   Should we apologize for enabling them to begin to share in the
oil wealth of that nation, indeed, for all the dispossed people of Iraq to
begin to share in that wealth?

Those are the kinds of thoughts that enter my mind when we fail to recognize
and give thanks for the larger good that is being done and instead focus only
on the undeniable tragedies.   Do we need to apologize for the excesses of
war?   Probably we should.   We should compensate families for losses, where we
can.   Of course, no compensation accounts for the death of a loved one.   War
is hell but so was the Iraq under Saddam for the non-chosen.   It was hell
then, too.   Read the stories of the unimaginable tortures and personal
degradation sustained by the non -chosen (non-Baathists, or
Sunnis').   Not to mention the athletes who competed in international games
and when they failed to win first place, had the soles of their feet destroyed
by Saddam when they returned to Iraq.

Maybe we should apologize for not coming sooner, for holding back in Gulf War
I and not finishing the job then so that the Shi'ites that rose up in the
south, with our complicity, were not slaughtered by Saddam, as they were.   We
should probably apologize that we didn't do the operation perfectly, that we
were blinded by hubris and ideology but that now we are getting smarter, turning
the whole operation over to them in a way that they have a chance of emerging
as a different, if not democratic, nation, rather than devolve into civil war.
  That there is hope that the first truly free election in the entire Middle
East not controlled by Imam's might happen---then again, it might not.   The
whole region is a crap shoot most of the time.

Perhaps we should apologize for supporting Saddam in the first place when he
was battling the Iranians?   Maybe we should have stood aside so Iran could
have overrun Iraq and turned the whole region into a fundamentalist theocracy
where the US is the Great Satan.   That would have been interesting, for sure.
So that people who dare to publish "The Satanic Verses" or anything
approaching that are put under a worldwide fatwa and sentenced to die and have their
lives significantly disrupted and have to go into hiding.   Better ask them if
we need to apologize.

Maybe we should apologize to the UN bureaucrats who have had their slush fund
"Oil for Food" so unkindly disrupted so they are no longer sloshing around in
millions of dollars.   It will be interesting to see if the investigation
into that corruption ever sees the light of day.

Nothing in this world is perfect, that is for sure.   While we tried to stop
the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the Muslim Bosnians have gone right ahead and
continued to force out the Serbs and Gypsies that resided in that area right
after WW II.   They (Serbs) were in the majority then but slowly they have been
dispossessed of the lands and homes by the Muslims, until the Muslims are in
the majority.   That's what the fight was about---the dispossessing of the
resident Serbs and Gypsies.   Who do we apologize to there?   The Serbs for not
protecting their right to their land?   To the Croats for not protecting their
cultural integrity?   To the Gypsies for not protecting their way of life?

Maybe we should apologize to the Palestinians for ever supporting the
creation of Isreal in the first place?   After all, they were dispossed by the
hundreds of thousands and we did nothing for them except put them in squalid camps
so that today we have the mess that is really the source of most of our
troubles with the Muslim world.

Maybe we should apologize to the Jews who we turned away when they came to
our shores seeking shelter and succor and instead we would not let them
disembark from their ship and instead sent them back to France to die in the
Holocaust?   France, where anti-semitism is again rampant in the land.

Maybe we should apologize for not understanding that all European and Middle
Eastern fights are ultimately about LAND and who will own and control it.   We
don't understand that because we have lots of land but they don't.   Land is
so incredibly important in every culture in those areas of the world and we
simply don't understand that fact because of our own experience.   After we've
been here for a thousand years, and have filled up the continent, maybe we'll
understand that because then it will be the core issue here.

Anyway, it tires me to read all the blaming and fingerpointing that goes on
in our media for what isn't going right in the world because of this or that US
action.   I am reminded of the following, attributed to Gandhi, that might
have some application here---because we are certainly in the arena and others
are not who are our severest critics, especially France, Germany and
Russia---who were up to their elbows in chicanery with Saddam and his oil.

Measure of a Man. . . . .
It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; who face is
marred by dust and sweat, who strives valiantly; who errs and may fail again,
because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who does actually
strive to do the deeds; who does know the great enthusiasm, the great devotion;
who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the
triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

                                                       Mahatma Gandhi

Hope this helps you and others 'think this through', because deep thinking
and clear-eyed views are definitely needed, unclouded by political correctness
or any other ideology of the left or right.   We need the pragmatism of the
Bhagavad-gita and Krishna's conversation with Arjuna on the eve of war with his
kinsmen.

Sincerely,

Paul Everett

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20040702/5c5cfebf/attachment-0016.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list