October 14, 2001


Honoring the Sacrifice


By Michael Toms

 

"We must guard against the military industrial complex"

                                                --Dwight D. Eisenhower

                                                   1960 Farewell Address

 

This morning I pulled up ABC News on-line, that's Australian Broadcasting, not American Broadcasting, and the lead story was titled, "Afghans Tell of Attack Horror."  The story was based on the reporting of approximately twenty foreign journalists who arrived in Afghanistan for the first time since the American-led air strikes began on Oct. 7th.  These journalists saw civilian casualties and talked with civilians whose villages had been bombed with estimates of the death toll ranging from 180 to 230 in one village.  One Afghan farmer was quoted as saying, "I lost my four daughters, my son and my wife in this attack."  Of course, the Taliban want to appeal to international public opinion by allowing previously forbidden foreign journalists into Afghanistan.  However, this does not diminish the fact that American bombing is killing innocent civilians.  

 

On September 11, 2001 nearly 6000 human beings sacrificed their lives.  These individuals were from more than eighty countries.  This tragedy is not just an American event; it is a world event.  Sacrifice is a noble word.  It means to "make sacred."  The deaths of more innocent civilians do not honor the sacrifice that these people have made.  Do not misunderstand me, I support justice being meted out to the criminals who perpetrated this horrific event.  The bombing of Afghanistan is not justice.  It is vengeance rooted in anger.  As Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us before, violence begets violence; it is never the answer.  When Timothy McVeigh was found guilty in an American court of law of blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Office Building, he was eventually executed for his crime.  We didn't execute his family, or his friends, or his community.  That was justice within the American system.  This "war on terrorism" is not justice.  Despite our government's attempts to propagandize this war with the assistance of the major mass media, we are killing innocent civilians.  How are they different from the innocents killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?  At the same time more than six million Afghan civilians are starving and the situation is being exacerbated, because they can't get UN relief because of the bombing.  

 

I am an American patriot.  I love this country.  I love this planet.  As such, I have a responsibility as a citizen living in a democracy to speak out and question the decisions that are being made on my behalf by this government using my tax dollars.  The American Revolution arose from dissent and the desire to escape the tyranny of King George and the British Empire at that time.  The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are all about the sovereign voice of the people in a democracy.  The Constitution begins with,  "We the People of the United States . . ."  The people are the sovereign voice in America.  The government works for us, not the other way around.  We have a right to question and challenge the decisions of our government leaders.  Indeed it is our responsibility to do so.  With freedom comes responsibility.  I encourage you to speak out and express your voice, however you can; in community, meet with your friends, neighbors, colleagues, write letters to elected officials, call them on the telephone, contact the media and tell them to report the full story of what is happening in Afghanistan.  These are perilous times.  The tragic events of 9/11/01 have given us an opportunity to recover our bearings, to revisit the founding principles of this nation, which were inspired by the Native peoples of this land.  The Iroquois Confederacy and its democratic principles inspired Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others.  This is a time to recover those principles and create a world that works for all.  As President Lincoln so eloquently expressed at the dedication of the Gettysburg national cemetery, ". . . That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth." 

 

Michael Toms

CEO, New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network

Info@newdimensions.org <mailto:Info@newdimensions.org>

www.newdimensions.org <http://www.newdimensions.org/>