Dear Editor,
After reading John Quick’s July 11 column titled “Understanding Terror’s True Human Cost Could Bring Peace,” and Amy M. Stein’s July 18 column titled “How Does a Democracy Fight Terror?,” both worth the effort in my opinion, I felt a little depressed. I’ve had a compelling interest in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis since the end of World War II when I was in my 20’s. I’ve read and heard myriad learned opinions and analyses and many acrimonious charges and countercharges, and I have personally anguished from afar over the incredible and still incendiary half-century-long conflict. The cost in human suffering exceeds my capacity to comprehend. But now I find my rational and cognitive capabilities saturated by the blizzard of conflicting catchphrases and name calling echoing around the world. It’s terrorists, occupiers, Zionists, invaders, anti-semites, and Islamic extremists, that are the problem, and who did what to whom and when and why is always the current issue. This seems to me to be a perfect storm, which could persist for another half century.
I think this problem is trying to tell us something. I’m reminded of how we anguished for decades over the cause and cure for overpopulation, until we discovered the seemingly obvious and colossal fact that overpopulation is caused by poverty, disenfranchisement and misery. Something about the DNA programming of our species seems to cause us to procreate more when we are stressed in this manner. We now know how to control population. We need to feed the world and teach its inhabitants to feed themselves whether or not they deserve it, and to give them a fair and honest chance to prosper if
we wish to control population. I believe the misery, the sense of trespass, the hatred, and the thirst for revenge we see in those we call terrorists constitute a perfect breeding ground for terrorism, and our “War on Terror” nourishes its very roots. Have we made a colossal blunder, all of us, and have we now become a vital part of the problem?
When any of us are wronged or trespassed upon, don’t we very naturally lose some of our objectivity and abandon rational processes for emotional ones? But when we become detached, as observers of trespassers and their victims, we cannot use that excuse. I can imagine myself filled with rage and hatred and a compulsion toward revenge which would obliterate all reason if I endured some of the suffering I’ve read about in the mid-east. I can imagine myself ranting incoherently in search of suitably vile and accusatory names for my perceived enemy. I can imagine having no interest whatever in his claims of innocence or justification. That’s my emotional side. My rational side says we need to abandon these delicious indulgences of characterizing each horrific act as evil incarnate and their victims as innocence personified. No explanation or assignment of blame, or punishment is an adequate response to the senseless death and suffering of innocent victims who just got in the way. It is just a senseless tragedy. Each side needs to begin to blame the true root cause and not the emotionally charged participants, and then really get creative in tackling the problem. Don’t both sides need to make difficult and painful decisions and compromises, and then accept a result that won’t be pretty, but could interrupt the current collective insanity? Don’t we need to help them?
Roy Guist, Morgan Hill
