Will Tears Ever Stop?
By John Gerassi, September 18, 2001
I can't help crying.
As soon as I see a person on TV telling the heart-rending story of the tragic fate
of their loved-one in the World Trade Center disaster, I can't control my tears.
But then I wonder why didn't I cry when our troops wiped out some 5,000 poor people
in Panama's El Chorillo neighborhood on the excuse of looking for Noriega. Our leaders
knew he was hiding elsewhere but we destroyed El Chorillo because the folks living
there were nationalists who wanted the U.S. out of Panama completely.
Worse still, why didn't I cry when we killed two million Vietnamese, mostly innocent
peasants, in a war which its main architect, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, knew
we could not win?
When I went to give blood the other day, I spotted a Cambodian doing the same, three
up in the line, and that reminded me: Why didn't I cry when we helped Pol Pot butcher
another million by giving him arms and money, because he was opposed to our enemy
(who eventually stopped the killing fields)?
To stay up but not cry that evening, I decided to go to a movie. I chose Lumumba,
at the Film Forum, and again I realized that I hadn't cried when our government arranged
for the murder of the Congo's only decent leader, to be replaced by General Mobutu,
a greedy, vicious, murdering dictator.
Nor did I cry when the CIA arranged for the overthrow of Indonesia's Sukarno (who
had fought the Japanese World War II invaders and established a free independent
country ) and then replaced him by another General, Suharto, who had collaborated
with the Japanese and who proceeded to execute at least half a million "Marxists"
(in a country where, if folks had ever heard of Marx, it was at best Groucho)?
I watched TV again last night and cried again at the picture of that wonderful now-missing
father playing with his two-month old child. Yet when I remembered the slaughter
of thousands of Salvadorans, so graphically described in the Times by Ray Bonner,
or the rape and murder of those American nuns and lay sisters there, all perpetrated
by CIA-trained and paid agents, I never shed a tear. I even cried when I heard how
brave had been Barbara Olson, wife of the Solicitor General, whose political views
I detested.
But I didn't cry when the US invaded that wonderful tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada
and killed innocent citizens who hoped to get a better life by building a tourist
airfield, which my government called proof of a Russian base, but then finished building,
once the island was secure in the US camp again.
Why didn't I cry when Ariel Sharon, today Israel's prime minister, planned, then
ordered, the massacre of two thousand poor Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatila, the same Sharon who (with such other Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists-become-prime
ministers as Begin and Shamir) killed the wives and children of British officers
by blowing up the King David hotel where they were billeted?
I guess one cries only for one's own. But is that a reason to demand vengeance on
anyone who might disagree with us? That's what Americans seem to want. Certainly
our government does, and so too most of our media. Do we really believe that we have
a right to exploit the poor folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we
are free and they are not?
So now we're going to go to war. We are certainly entitled to go after those who
killed so many of our innocent brothers and sisters. And we'll win, of course. Against
Bin Laden. Against Taliban. Against Iraq. Against whoever and whatever. In the process
we'll kill a few innocent children again. Children who have no clothes for the coming
winter. No houses to shelter them. And no schools to learn why they are guilty, at
two or four or six years old. Maybe Evangelists Falwell and Robertson will claim
their death is good because they weren't Christians, and maybe some State Department
spokesperson will tell the world that they were so poor that they're now better off.
And then what? Will we now be able to run the world the way we want to? With all
the new legislation establishing massive surveillance of you and me, our CEOs will
certainly be pleased that the folks demonstrating against globalization will now
be cowed forever. No more riots in Seattle, Quebec or Genoa. Peace at last.
Until next time.
Who will it be then? A child grown-up who survived our massacre of his innocent parents
in El Chorillo? A Nicaraguan girl who learned that her doctor mother and father were
murdered by a bunch of gangsters we called "democratic contras" who read
in the CIA handbook that the best way to destroy the only government which was trying
to give the country's poor a better lot was to kill its teachers, health personnel,
and government farm workers? Or maybe it will be a bitter Chilean who is convinced
that his whole family was wiped out on order of Nixon's Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger who could never tell the difference between a communist and a democratic
socialist or even a nationalist.
When will we Americans learn that as long as we keep trying to run the world for
the sake of the bottom line, we will suffer someone's revenge? No war will ever stop
terrorism as long as we use terror to have our way. So I stopped crying because I
stopped watching TV. I went for a walk. Just four houses from mine. There, a crowd
had congregated to lay flowers and light candles in front of our local firehouse.
It was closed. It had been closed since Tuesday because the firemen, a wonderful
bunch of friendly guys who always greeted neighborhood folks with smiles and good
cheer, had rushed so fast to save the victims of the first tower that they perished
with them when it collapsed.
And I cried again.
So I said to myself when I wrote this, don't send it; some of your students, colleagues,
neighbors will hate you, maybe even harm you. But then I put on the TV again, and
there was Secretary of State Powell telling me that it will be okay to go to war
against these children, these poor folks, these US-haters, because we are civilized
and they are not. So I decided to risk it.
Maybe, reading this, one more person will ask: Why are so many people in the world
ready to die to give us a taste of what we give them?
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