A Knife Is Enough

Whodunnit – or Whydunnit?

Whoever toppled the Trade Center is trying to teach US a lesson. America’s cities have never been bombed in a war. But we have probably murdered over a million innocent civilians from the air during the last century – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Germany, Vietnam, Iraq come to mind.

If you believe in karma, this is just the first little interest payment on a truly enormous debt! Scary, but something to think about.

So it is ironic that the grim debt-collector came calling from the air, with our own civilian airplanes.

The fact that the US is always the one dishing out the bombs without getting hurt is one big reason for resentment against us all over the world. Although the leaders of all the nations will publicly voice regret, my guess is there are billions of common folk who kind of feel it was about time America got a taste of its own medicine.

So much for the general theory of why. Specifically, the USA massively sponsors the campaign of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which has been going since the beginning of the 20th century. And throughout the century before that, the USA ethnically cleansed its own continent.

Every month, 5000 children die in Iraq from the consequences of US bombing and sanctions.

Somebody is saying, enough. You are going to stop now. There is no room left to push peoples around like that on this little planet. And they are right. What are US F-16’s and Israeli nuclear warheads doing in the 50-mile wide sliver of the Holy Land?

The sooner America catches on that it is not the untarnished good guy of the world, and stops reacting like a trigger-happy cowboy, the less retribution we will pay in the end. Because someday we are going to have to pay for the rivers of innocent blood we have shed. I am convinced the universe works like that, no matter that Hollywood and Pentagon scenarists would have us believe otherwise.

There is a proverb, “The stomachs of the poor are the sword of God.” But even a knife is enough, when you press them hard enough.

I love my country, and I write this because I would like her to spare herself the full retribution, and not add to her moral overdraft with wanton abuse of aerial weaponry in reprisal. I hope she will learn quickly from this, what Europe and Asia have learned over the centuries: what civilian casualties really mean.

Mr. John-Paul Leonard is a free-lance writer and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN)