Peace: A Human Option in Wake of 9/11

I am thinking about peace today.

Wherever violence occurs, the human spirit is damaged. When innocent people die, the disease of violence spreads, breeding counter action. War, be it global, declared, tribal, ethnic based, etc. is an abomination. It is a signal failure of vision, of communication and of a sense of the complete interdependence of humankind.

I am thinking about peace.

Sept. 11, to my mind, was a continuation of a brutal violence seen throughout history, evident in nearly every country, accepted by all cultures as an ugly "given" relative to the range of human interaction. There is no justification for Sept. 11, no reason to minimize it due to scale or lives lost.

It was an horrific example of the extremities, the depths, to which humans may lower themselves. 

The allied bombing of Dresden, the Luftwaffe's sport in Guernica, the pogroms in Russia, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fallujah, the massacre in MaiLai, the current actions in Libya, the suppression of civilians in many Middle Eastern countries, the Rwandan nightmare — all of these involve the intentional and wanton slaying of countless numbers of human beings and compose only a suggestion of the scale of suffering from this false, this barbaric rule of war: An eye for an eye.

While Sept. 11 did change the way a lot of Americans see the world, I think we are mature enough to admit that the world itself was already well schooled in the capacities of human cruelty and that no continent is free of blame when it comes to participating in atrocity.

Patriotism is a virtue when it takes into account the well being of all humanity. The object of someone who loves her country, should include, to my mind, that she also love the other peoples of the world and, as a patriot, should endeavor to participate on this planet manners tuned to the well being of all.

Technology has erased all the natural boundaries that once limited humans to think only locally. Trade is universal, education is universal, people freely travel the planet physically or virtually and we must see that this requires new, more holistic ways of viewing what philosophers used to call "the good life." 

Kennedy's beautiful statement, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," needs revision. Now we might better ask what we can do to serve the world and, in so doing, know that we are also best serving our country, our community and our families. 

The earth is weary of our wars. I am thinking about peace today.

To my mind, that is what citizens and soldiers alike, around this planet, want most ... and we must shape our thoughts and actions in a way that promulgates peace and shuns thoughts and actions of war. The people who died in the Twin Towers, including those who gave their lives in an effort to save the buildings' occupants, wanted nothing more when they left their homes that morning than to return, to have dinners with their families — in a word, to be at peace. This is true of all of the peoples of this world ... but real peace requires peace for all.

Honoring the people who died Sept. 11, in all locations of that insane action, is not a matter of summoning up our resolve to be tougher, to return violence, to turn our public spaces into armed fortresses, to become "harder" and more cynical in our world vision. Honoring these people is not a matter of seeking payback, revenge.

Let's just get everyone home to dinner safely.

I am thinking today about peace.