Will the tears ever stop?

I can't help crying.

As soon as I see a person on TV telling the heart-rendering 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 only 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 for ever. 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 lit 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?

John Gerassi
Professor
The City University of New York
September 18, 2001

Professor John Gerassi received his Ph.D. from the London University.
Professor Gerassi presently teaches Political Science at the City University of New York.

 

I cry whenever I hear of something like what he wrote about... I don't watch the news because corporate media glorifies all these atrocities.

What happened with your army-dodging plan?

 

Yeah... I didn't say anything about it, but that was a really beautiful passage in a tragic way.

 

I hate the news due to the sorry state of our world anymore, you don't hear a lot of good, and yet I watch and read about it anyway. It's like morbid curiousity. Like when you see a horrific car wreck and you don't want to look, and yet you can't seem to stop yourself from looking.

Hugs...

 

I shed my first tears about 9 11 a couple of days later when I heard an interview with the last survivor to be pulled from the wreckage. Her voice just got me.

 

I was an absolute wreck on 9/11. I had woken up early that morning, bustling about the kitchen getting breakfast ready for my older son. I had the televison on in the kitchen (bad habit that I no longer do) as I was looking forward to a program that was due to come on. I glanced over at the televison, noticing that the news was on. I was irritated, thinking, what the heck is going on, I'm going to miss my program! But then I realized what was happening. I saw the footage of the first trade tower being hit. I thought to myself, okay, there has been some sort of accident. Well then, just as I was watching live coverage, I hear the newscaster scream "Oh my God!" and I literally dropped into a chair when I saw the second plane hit. I couldn't move. I felt paralized.

I tried to go about my usual routine, listening absentmindedly to my oldest son's chatter, but I was now hysterical. I called my husband at work, sobbing onto the phone, just as I found out the Pentagon had been hit. I was terrified. Then when I learned that the other plane that had crashed had flown over where I lived, I was filled with such panic, I can't even describe the fear that gripped me.

I couldn't stop watching the footage, the burning trade towers, the papers being scattered into the wind. Talking about it now still sends chills up my spine. I became so panicked that I grabbed my son and took him into the basement, after I had found that a plane had crashed nearby. I knew it probably wouldn't help much, but it was the only way I could half-way calm myself.

I called my mother, and I could barely talk through the sobs. I was literally hyperventillating. She said she would come right over, as she could tell I was in bad shape and she was worried. I kept calling my husband, and crying to him "what are we going to do? What is happening?!" He ended up leaving his office early to come home to us as my mom had to head off to work at the hospital.

For days, all I could do was stare at that televison screen, or listen to radio broadcasts about that horrific day. I was having nightmares every night, and I didn't even want to leave the house. When I finally broke down and decided to take my son to a walk to the playground, I kept searching the sky for planes, cowering at every sound. I was a wreck.

I was haunted by envisioning those poor people that had been victims of such a hate crime. I couldn't stop thinking of the loved ones that had been lost. I felt helpless, I felt vulnerable. I kept wondering how they felt, what their last moments were like. I watched footage of people jumping from the towers, and the sounds of screaming, the sirens...geez, I know I will never, ever forget that day.

I will never understand why it happened. It's terrifying to know that there is so much hate in the world.

Peace.

 

didn't cry at all... umm got up, heard the news on the radio, called a friend who's brother worked in one of the towers. then i went to school.

 

i cry over anything..no matter how little, really i cried during 13 going on 30...how pathetic

 

didn't cry at all... umm got up, heard the news on the radio, called a friend who's brother worked in one of the towers. then i went to school.

to be completely honest i didn't even care that much... it sucks when bad things happen, but it was blown completely out of proportion just because it happened in america. dunno i just had a vague sense of unease.

 

As heartless as it may sound, I felt this way as well.
I mean, why is it such a big deal?
Why are the terrorist the threat when Bush couldn't keep us safe?
That has nothing to do with anything, just a thought.

 

22 000 kids starved to death yesterday
28 000 died from lack of basic medical care yesterday too
that is 50 000 little sweethearts, cherubs, somebodies babies.........
yesterday, and today another 50 000 will die
and tomorrow, and so on and so on and so on........
What was the original 911 tally, like 7500 or so killed
then it shrank to like 3000, I could be wrong here, not sure exactly.

hmmmmmmmmmm

maybe that is why I didn't cry till like three days later, but the tears were tears of joy at hearing this woman describe being rescued from the rubble of the WTC, the last one that was.

 

See, once you see the real facts, this is nothing but being betratyed by the ones we call our leaders...
::exhales::
I'm done with it.

 

I certainly don't consider myself Vulcan, but I do believe that crying and t ears are a highly charged emotional response. We can explain things away physiologically by noting which lobe of the brain is being effected and which neural network is firing in order to cause the response.

Why you choose certain things that bring you to tears over other things is not really a terribly important thought to ponder. I don't think anyone would consider you a lesser person because you cried over tragedy that happened to Americans and didn't cry over tragedy that happened off American soil.

I also had a delayed reaction to the WTC bombing. Some idiot in my office had the TV on all f**king day long. The next day -- after a night full of nightmares -- I phoned in sick.

I cry when I read the statistics of people who are infected with HIV, when I hear about pregnant girls who don't know what the word "fetus" means, and I smile when I learn that deadbeat dads are caught and punished.

 

Well, the list included many travellers who were out of touch with their families and possibly in NY, so they may have had cause to post the higher number at first. The betrayal, though, is our own fault. We accept it.
50 000 little Nathans, little Seras.........every fuckin day
tick tock tick tock
Is that a bomb I hear? Our time is about up I figure. Time to pass on what is left to a new bunch.

 

God man.
Just this whole thing.
People claim it brings us together be seriously look:
We are afriad of people who are other nationalites; We look over our shoulders; We don't trust our neighbors; We don't LOVE; We hate the world.
It's sick, man. Why can't we just love one another?
I love every one of you on here.

 

i was reading lots of stats like this in my environmental science book and i just think its mindblowing that we have come this far and still havent even covered those basic needs of our own species, i mean are we really taht reptillian, selfish and needy that we have to fight over territory and resources??? or are our minds really that closed to not even realize the blatantly obvious or at least the decent thing to do? and everyone carrys on like their worlds are the only ones that exist, or matter, and they got their own and thats good enough... humans are the only creature capable of realizing and transcending these certain things, yet its taking us so long to evolve and move forward and better ourselves... so i havent cried over any of this yet, but i have just been really surprised and dumbfounded...but i really do admire people who can bring themselves to feel so compassionate for others, unfortunatley it is a real unheard of accomplishment in this world.
[/end ramble]

 

Nice, man.

 

love you too, and wish you all success

 

Same for you, my brother.
Peace on your soul.

 

It's not just because it happened in America, but the tradgedy did hit close to home more since it took place here. That's not to say that I didn't or don't cry over national tragedies, that they don't affect me, because they do. Geez, I really wonder about someone who didn't feel anything on 9/11. The loss of so many lives. How could that not affect you? *shakes head*

Peace.