So this is excruciatingly late, but better late than never.
So Ian, Diane and I all read Under the Persimmon Tree and found it to be very one-dimensional and Americanized. So as I was looking for some sort of worldly link to this, I can across a speech Colin Powell made to the Heritage Foundation in 2002. I was reading through it and found this little snippet:
"We also have a deep and abiding national interest in bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end. With our friends in the region and the international community, we are working to bring about a lasting peace based on President Bush's vision of two states living side-by-side in peace and security. This peace will require from the Palestinians a new and different leadership, new institutions, and an end to terror and violence. As the Palestinians make progress in this direction, Israel will also be required to make hard choices, including an end to all settlement construction activity, consistent with the Mitchell Report."
If you want to read the whole thing, it's here.
Anyway, back to the Staples book. I wasn't so much dissapointed with her writing style, but the content of the book was somewhat wishy-washy. It seems to me this would make a great second-string Dreamworks production..."the tragic story of Najmah, the orphan, miraculously reuniting with her brother and saving the family land from their evil uncle." As topical as the book was, however, it also raised some important issues. Why were Americans bombing innocent people and their villages? Was it purposeful? And how does this affect our perception of the war, our soldiers, and the people in the Middle East?
I found an article written by Ramzi Kysia, a Muslim-American peace activist, working with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, who was also in NYC the day the planes crashed into the twin towers. He talks of terrorism, and the things he observed on 9/11. He makes some chilling comparisons and really makes you think about what we are doing in retaliation of losing those 3000+ lives on the day that changed America. This excerpt from his article is very powerful, and really makes you wonder:
"How comfortable would we be if Iraqi warplanes flew over our skies, bombing our cities and towns every few days, over 12 long years - with absolute impunity? September 11 tells us.
...How comfortable could we be if Iraq had thousands of nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, the most powerful military in the world, and was threatening us with destruction if we didn't do whatever they wanted us to do? September 11 tells us.
...The sign at the memorial in Union Park last year that stands out in my mind more than any other simply read, "We don't want this to happen to anyone else ever again." It does happen, all the time, all over the world. It happens here, in Iraq, every day.
...It happens when U.S. warplanes accidentally bomb civilians, over and over again. Our defense is "self-defense" - we bomb every time Iraqis challenge our right to control their skies.
...It happens when uncounted Iraqi children starve to death, every day, because our bombings and sanctions have deprived them of adequate income, adequate food, and access to safe drinking water. According to UNICEF and the Red Cross, among others, hundreds of thousands of children here have died because of U.S. actions against Iraq over the last 12 years. That's a children's 9-11 every month - 250 skyscrapers filled with babies and toddlers, crashing to the ground. Are these innocents any less real than those killed in New York and Washington last year?"
The full article, which I recommend, is here.
What are we doing?
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