I wrote this article in December, 2001, and find it especially timely:

THE DARK MIRROR
Why do they hate us?

To get that answer, we should listen to the recent video of Osama bin Laden. It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing a scary reflection of our own face.

Lest we forget, in 1991 Americans arrogantly boasted of bombing Iraq back to the Stone Ages, and now we speak of “turning Afghanistan into a parking lot.”

Do we even care how such cruel words affect those who will be recipient of these horrific wars? Will our vulgar thoughtlessness incite yet another’s misguided passion or inflame the exact kind of rage we are now bitterly feeling?

Are we inhumane enough to imagine that certain people are somehow different than us and do not have feelings?

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Jim Stewart of CBS news reported the Iraqi bombing was “almost picture perfect.”

As thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers writhed in the agony of death, reporter Dan Rather jubilantly remarked, “Congratulations on a job well done!”

When asked his opinion of the high number of Iraqis we killed (including civilians) General Colin Powell coolly replied, “It’s really not a number I’m terribly interested in.”

The Toronto Globe reported Feb. 2, 1991 (Getting Blown to Bits in the Dark) that there were American pilots joking about the massive bombing raids on Iraq. Other pilots were smiling and slapping each other on the back, and a pilot interviewed on television described how ambushing Iraqis was like “waiting for cockroaches to come out so we could kill them.”

CNN gaily announced, “Baghdad is lit up like a Christmas tree.”

No one thought of the untold misery happening in that desolate country of dying children, grieving parents, orphaned babies and innocent lives in graves. Instead, we made fun of them, as if they deserved to suffer. Today, we continue to starve Iraqi children through cruel sanctions.

If Americans felt even a tiny trace of compassion for thousands of Iraqi civilians we killed, we never expressed it – not even after Newsday magazine reported that our soldiers buried some iraqi troops alive.

Instead, we celebrated death with nationwide victory parades.

How must Arabs and Muslims feel, when we embrace their tragedies with such indifference and extreme coldheartedness?

What is so scary about the tape of bin Laden – assuming it’s genuine – is that it sounds so much like the cold-hearted rhetoric and detached language of our own leaders as hundreds are killed in Afghanistan.

We speak the same eerie language and perform the same awful deeds.

Macomb Daily 12/30/2001