ZGram - 9/14/2001 - "America in mourning - and rage"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 14, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Since Tuesday morning I have been glued to my screen.  Words fail me to
describe my emotions.

Those of us who have experienced first hand what wars are like have a
different perspective on things than those who only know "war" from
sanitized news clips and Hollywood films.  Let me tell you - war is hell!

I remember my childhood friend who I'll call Lara.  We were
twelve-year-olds when we met.  Lara was a full orphan, World War II  having
martyred her parents.

Lara did have a grandmother, though, a fierce little woman who sat on a
milk stool and kept a sharp eye on my friend while trying to teach us some
lessons about what war was like and how to avoid it by living a godfearing
life.

I remember that I was a bit afraid of her;  her stories were scary to me;
her lessons were uncomfortable and often outright boring;  I hardly ever
spoke to her;  I thought that she was ancient and I, of course, was young.
And strong.  And brimful of a cocky confidence that springs from innocence
and inexperience.

Of her life and her times, I knew next to nothing and didn't care to know -
and it took more than 40 years until I learned her story.

In one dark night of satanic brutality preceding World War II, she lost six
members of her family while she herself hid in the bushes and watched - her
father, her mother, her husband, her husband's mother, her husband's
father, and her son.  How did she lose them?  To swarthy bandits who came
with shovels, axes and machetes and silenced whatever still moved.  And,
no, the bandits weren't Nazis.  They were called Communists.

These days, they've re-christened themselves.

One of this woman's sons who managed to survive the slaughter, Lara's
father, was marched off to Siberia in years to come, a veritable Gulag
slave.  A few weeks later, Lara's mother was caught in the crossfire of
fiercely contesting armies and bled to death, age 24, but not before she
willed her little daughter, Lara, to the woman who, some years hence, sat
hunched and wrinkled on her milk stool and tried to speak of things we
didn't want to hear.

I so often think of this woman.  In those young years, I felt no curiosity.
Whatever she experienced in a war that was long past was boring history -
or so I thought - and of no interest to me.

Today I wished that I'd listened.  I could have learned from her.

This afternoon Ernst and I went into town to buy an American flag to
display as a symbol of mourning and to honor those who lost their lives in
that horrific event on September 11.  They didn't deserve what happened to
them - any more than Lara's kin deserved to die in unspeakable horror so
many years ago in distant Russia.

Some of my readers have chided me that, since the disaster, they thought
that I didn't express enough grief.  They do me wrong and read me wrong - I
feel sorrow and grief and fear and dismay and even choking anger that so
many innocents died in the flames not at all of their making.

But did you notice:  Nobody spoke of Holocaust?

Those of us who lived in war and saw our loved ones die in war, who saw the
knives cut through raw flesh, feel different.  We know the war today is
simply an extension of the brutal, bloody war of yesterday.  It will still
be the same old war exacting the blood of a new generation of innocents in
some distant battlefield.  Many of those now itching for war and "lucky
enough" to return from that war will come back without eyes, without limbs,
broken in body and spirit - to end their lives in some Veterans Hospital,
forgotten!

Can't we do better than that?

America is young.  She has been badly wounded.  But she knows nothing of
the costs of real war.  How it originates.  On what it feeds.  How it
connives and deceives.  How it devours the innocent and spits them in the
gutter.

Although I'm not nearly as old and as wrinkled as Lara's grandmother was, I
feel as though now it is I who sits on a milk stool in front of my
computer, trying to speak of the lessons I learned - while a whole world is
roaring to slay an as yet unidentified villain so as to please a bully
whose hands are also blood-stained - and cause bloodshed on top of more
bloodshed, more pain piled on top of more sorrow.

When I first took to cyberspace in 1995, one of my very first supporters
and correspondents was a man some ten years older than I am.  I'll call him
Gregory.

>From the beginning, I was touched by Gregory's simplicity and basic
decency.  We have corresponded a lot, and I would like to honor Gregory
today by sending his words to the farthest corners of a world now girding
itself for revenge.  He expresses the feelings of many:

[START]

The recent events have changed the world. I support and understand the need
to go after those that attacked us. But nobody is asking why. If we begin
attacking Arab nations we will have to kill every Arab to be certain we are
free of future attacks.

Nobody, except a few in the media are suggesting the root of the hatred
toward us is our one sided support of Israel. American people get little
unfiltered news and a slanted history favoring Israel. Despite this, the
root cause of why Arabs hate Americans is so obvious, one would think
Americans could see the obvious and understand [that] to be free of fear of
attack we must change our foreign policy.

 I am sickened in sorrow for those lost and their families and those who
will be affected in the future. I am utterly disgusted that this nation has
allowed itself to be the tool of another and has paid such a horrific price
in the blood of its innocent and trusting citizens. Our political process
has been poisoned and free information and discussion censored by those
whose interests are alien to these United States in favor of a foreign
nation.  Our elected representatives equally caused these events by placing
personal and political gain above the nation's true interests.

 I am so sad that  the efforts of so many fine people to alert the nation
to its danger did not prevent this awful tragedy. As we gather ourselves in
the  aftermath we must find the courage and strength of dedication to
fearlessly affirm our patriotic devotion to the truth  and the ideals of
Duty, Honor and Country.

[END]

=====

Two Thought for the Day:

"Nothing is settled permanently unless it is settled equitably."

(Abraham Lincoln)

and:

"The terrorists behind Tuesday's attack want war. By all means we should
punish those directly involved, but we must not give them the war they
want."

(Sent to the Zundelsite)