A message from a friend in Europe about this week's tragedy -- McMinnville, Class of 58 Bulletin Board

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Date Posted: 09:40:30 09/16/01 Sun
Author: vonda
Subject: A message from a friend in Europe about this week's tragedy

This is the full of her response. I think it is important to ponder carefully what we think and do. (A chara means 'my friend' in Irish)

a chara,
I�m neither American nor Irish, but let me try to write here what I think, as a European woman, about Tuesday dreadful attack against America, and about what I think is laying ahead for all of us.

As anyone else I was at first numbed and than horrified when the first news broke up, and that horror came back to me again and again in the long nights I�ve spent looking at CNN and Italian TV. I never looked at those terrible images from Washington and Manhattan as a simple observer. From the very beginning I felt that we all had suddenly entered in a different world and in a different time. I don�t know what it will be like, I only know it will be different.

And from the very beginning I was well aware that what happened in Washington and New York on Tuesday could happen tomorrow in Rome, in Paris or London. At stake there is the future of all of us: we�ll stand up together or we�ll fall together.

Now, willy-nilly, we�ll have to face two very hard but unavoidable challenges.

The first one is a proper answer to the perpetrators of this attack. Like you I think Osama bin Laden is one of them. What we don�t know, at present time, is how wide his network is, how many groups � or, maybe political factions or governments - are involved, and how many hidden supporters they have inside Europe and the USA. And it seems to me we don�t even know where he really is, now. We are finding out that his men aren�t hopeless young zealots, but skilled middle class men driven not by desperation but by pure bigotry. And fundamentalism, no matter if Muslim, Christian or Jewish, is the stronger enemy of human reason and the most powerful source of hatred. No doubt we have to fight them, no doubt we can�t let them think that they can destroy our towns and our lives without retribution. But we must be sure we are going to hit the right target, in the right time (with the widest consent that can be found around the world) and in the right way (without endangering innocent people).
As well, we have to know that a single strike is unlikely to be enough. I�m afraid it�s going to be a long and dangerous struggle.

Meanwhile we have to face the second challenge.

It�s time for politics, for too long overshadowed by the markets, to come back on the stage and to play its role in full. We, people and governments of the western countries, have huge responsibilities towards the South of the world. Too often in front of the suffering of poor populations we have found more comfortable to turn our eyes aside, or to content ourselves with a bit of charity.

We have deserted the Afghan women when they cried for their dignity and their lives and pleaded for our help against the Taliban power that wonted � and succeeded � to drive them to a subhuman condition. �Real politic� was the answer.

We have deserted crowds of men, women and children working long hours in appalling conditions, in unhealthy factories, with no future, no hope and no right but a miserable wage. �Free markets� was the answer.

We have deserted little communities fighting for their land, their culture, and their own survival against greedy and powerful multinational corporations. �Progress� was the answer.

We must change all of this, and we must change very quickly.
We must address the problems and not let them became gangrenous as we have done with Israel and the Palestinians (by the way, allowing Sharon a free hand against the Palestinians isn�t a good start at all !!).

Otherwise we will offer to the several Osama bin Laden scattered in the world a comfortable environment for his men and his hatred and we will pay a very, very high price. It�s up to us. A week ago we could ignore this simple truth. Now we cant.

Dear, I know this isn�t a comfortable picture. But the images of people in New York and elsewhere in the USA coming to me through my TV screen in these nights are a big comfort and a powerful source of hope. The America that fascinated me when I was a teen-ager, the America that I couldn�t recognise in a country which seemed more and more interested in the power of money and less and less interested in the welfare of human beings, the America that I supposed lost, was again in front of me, alive and strong.

We can make it.
Analea

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