Like everyone I was in a state of shock on September 11th. I cried when I saw the planes fly into the buildings and I cried some more as I watched the buildings collapse and bury thousands of people. What happened on that day was a terrible tragedy. That being said, I would like to take another perspective on world events.
From listening to media reports and hearing people speak out about recent events, I hear a lot of fear. People are frightened and unsure about what is happening. Yet I am not among those living in fear. In fact I am no more frightened than I was on September 10th. At first this bothered me. I thought that perhaps I was being insensitive to things, but after some time, I now understand why I feel the way I do.
I suppose the bottom line is I 100% expected events like this to happen. Some may think that cynical, but in reality, as events have shown, I was being realistic. I’ve been having a hard time understanding people who have been rushing out to buy gas masks and antibiotics. On thinking about these people I realize they truly did not expect anything like this to ever happen to this country. I have to wonder why and the only conclusion I have is that they have not looked at the world realistically.
Unlike most Americans, I knew about the civil wars in Africa where millions of people were killed in a genocidal war. I also knew about the thousands of people everywhere in the world who die each day from AIDs, poverty and disease. I have to ask myself why this country and the rest of the world doesn’t grieve or become outraged by these events? Why is it that we hardly blink an eye when millions are slaughtered around the world and yet we are up in arms when only 6,000 people are killed in the September 11th attacks?
Every day thousands of people die from the AIDs virus, a great many of them in Africa, and the world does not mourn for them. Women in Africa have little access to birth control and are left to bear children they cannot feed, who (if they don’t starve) are highly likely to be infected with AIDs. This is a crisis and a disaster of epic proportions. Yet what assistance does our government provide? Thanks to G.W., U.S.-funded health organizations are under a “gag order” and can not even help these women. Instead of offering family planning, we offer shovels to dig the graves of children who starve to death or die from AIDs before their fifth birthday.
I suppose the term “terrorism” is relative. For many, terrorism might be defined as having to watch your children die because some rich government refuses to offer you birth control. Or refuses to help end the civil war that killed most of your family and left you living in a refugee camp. Terror doesn’t just come from madmen flying planes into buildings. Refusing to offer basic humanitarian needs and allowing people to needlessly suffer can also be seen as a form of terrorism.
You ask the average American on the street about these events and they are clueless. Most think the newspaper is only for reporting sports scores. For years we have refused to look beyond our borders and see the horrible adversity that the rest of the world faces. The real shock of September 11th isn’t that it happened, it’s that it didn’t happen SOONER!
My only hope is that recent events will wake people up to the other sufferings in this world.
Hello. My name is Angela Christine Byers (yes, my mother actually named me “Angel of Christ”), and I am an atheist.
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Angela C. Byers