tp225.xml
Title
tp225.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-03-10
TomPaine Story: Story
British journalist Robert Fisk has been among the most insightful commentators since September 11. In an essay focusing on the Wests history of broken promises to the People of the Middle East, he remarks that ""The problem, I fear, is that without any sense of history, we do not understand injustice.""
This wise observation is relevant both to the roots and to the frightening potential outcomes of this war. Blindness to history and injustice has many diverse origins: transnational corporate economics, racial bigotry, religious intolerance, disregard of international law, a superpowers eagerness to use overwhelming military power regardless of consequences, the crushing of dissent and the violation of fundamental human rights and liberties. These longstanding problems have cost many lives in the past. They have never been combined in a culture of cruelty more odious than the mass media extravaganza of ""America Strikes Back.""
After September 11, we are living through the first war of the 21st century. The stakes in potential loss of life and suffering are immense. The First World War of the last century caused horrible death, and helped shape the world for decades, spawning a Second World War and a cold war between its victorious superpowers.
Overcoming terrorism will require overcoming George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their dark hallucinatory vision of complete control. It will require substituting instead a vision and an international political economic order authentically based on the ""recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"" enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How to make it happen, or alternatively the failure of the mass of People to see the cracks in the foundation of U.S. war for domination, will be the essential stuff of 21st century history.
This wise observation is relevant both to the roots and to the frightening potential outcomes of this war. Blindness to history and injustice has many diverse origins: transnational corporate economics, racial bigotry, religious intolerance, disregard of international law, a superpowers eagerness to use overwhelming military power regardless of consequences, the crushing of dissent and the violation of fundamental human rights and liberties. These longstanding problems have cost many lives in the past. They have never been combined in a culture of cruelty more odious than the mass media extravaganza of ""America Strikes Back.""
After September 11, we are living through the first war of the 21st century. The stakes in potential loss of life and suffering are immense. The First World War of the last century caused horrible death, and helped shape the world for decades, spawning a Second World War and a cold war between its victorious superpowers.
Overcoming terrorism will require overcoming George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their dark hallucinatory vision of complete control. It will require substituting instead a vision and an international political economic order authentically based on the ""recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"" enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How to make it happen, or alternatively the failure of the mass of People to see the cracks in the foundation of U.S. war for domination, will be the essential stuff of 21st century history.
Collection
Citation
“tp225.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 23, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/721.