Jan. 4 - Maybe it's just hard for us to believe that real human beings can act like monsters, much less be monsters. It certainly has been proven that individuals, like Paul Bernardo, can torture their prey for days before finally killing them, but it was a bigger shock to find that his accomplice was his wife. But we quickly categorize them as psychopaths who usually work alone or at most as a pair.

It is even harder to believe that several hundred or even thousands of people can be involved in sadism. I say this even knowing about the concentration camps and "medical experiments" of the Holocaust because howevermuch I may know it happened, my mind balks at the thought that the perpetrators were actual people. I don't know if that makes sense, this disconnect between what I know to be the truth yet what I can only barely believe happened.

Maybe I need to create a new "moment" which I'll call something like a how could they moment.

We all heard stories from Iraq, and the weight of evidence was such that we reluctantly were forced to know that terrible things were happening to the people in that country but these things were so terrible that, much like reports before our soldiers actually entered the concentration camps, things we thought might be exagerated turned out to be grossly understated.

In the midst of ongoing discoveries of mass graves, it is important to remember that there are living witnesses as well. Some of their stories are in this AP article Witnesses to evil and they and others like them deserve justice.

Posted by: Debbye at 09:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jan. 1 - I didn't make it to midnight, darn it. (Full disclosure: I didn't make it much past 10 pm.) I really wanted to stay up so I could cheer for Shoshana Johnson, but sleep won out. I hope she'll accept my excuse that the spirit was willing but but I fell asleep on the chair.

I think we all took the PoWs and their families as our family, and their presence in our collective memories shines clearly. The interviews with Mr. Johnson in particular revealed a man of conviction, courage and faith, and, right after receiving word she has been rescued, didn't the Johnson family friend sweeping the aunt into a giant hug while jumping up and down with joy, crying "Glory Hallelujah, Glory Hallelujah" express the jubilation of us all?

Shoshana Johnson, Lori Piestewa and Jessica Lynch have become part of our American legend, expressing the attitude of Americans toward Americans and our common heart. It's not about gender or race, it's about family.

Some may be thinking that the outburst of emotion upon the rescue of the PoWs was an insult to the numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq. Others will declare that we continue to focus on the former PoWs to divert attention from the ongoing casualties in Iraq.

They don't get it. It is precisely those brief moments of grace and hope triumphant that render meaning to our dead and wounded because the former bespeaks hope even as the latter bespeaks sacrifice.

That right there is the difference between those who buy into the cult of suicide-homicide bombers and us. They are said to sacrifice out of despair, whereas we sacrifice out of hope.

Our strongest national belief is hope. It is that hope which caused our ancestors to emigrate. It is why we work our asses off and steadily believe that the future will be better.

It is expressed by our plea to the Almighty that he stand beside us and guide us because we understand that humility and faith are the bedrock of hope: hope defies logic, statistics, and reason. It's why we supported Terry Schiavo's parents against the poor odds given by the arrogant medical profession, and why we were bewildered when pessimistic Iranian officials gave up all hope of finding survivors. We expect differently from our leaders.

So it doesn't look good. When does it ever? Keep digging, keep trying, don't give up. We didn't find any survivors after the first day the WTC collapsed and we know how much it hurts but keep digging anyway and when you find people alive, jump up and down with joy, thank Allah and hug everybody and keep digging. Blow off the naysayers and dig some more!

Never quit. Leave no one behind. We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail.

We are a people of unlimiting hope. We are Americans precisely because we hope, because we embrace an idea - our belief in the unlimited potential of the individual and thus our confidence and belief in ourselves collectively - upon which we have chosen to make our stand.

No matter what country you come from, you are an American the minute you consciously choose to be an American. George Washington becomes the father of your country and you become one of his descendants. Some of your relatives may piss you off and others are the kind you keep out of sight when company comes over, that's all.

So some of us are nuttier than the rest. Oh well, we say, there's at least one in every family.

I think we need to rework the concept of hyphenated identities. It is flawed because it is backwards. Fiorello LaGuardia should be remembered as an American-Italian, not an Italian-American. How many airports are named after him in Italy? How many statues of Al Smith have been erected in Ireland, or high schools named after Dr. King in Africa? For that matter, is Sir Wilfird Laurier even mentioned in French history textbooks?

None of those men would have been able to achieve their mighty deeds in their hyphenated lands. Just think: those and other great and innovative minds would have lived and died in obscurity had their forefathers not ended up on North American soil.

That's the USA I celebrate. Not the hyper-power America, because the fact that we are as yet unchallenged in world dominance still gives me the willies: I don't like it, and I don't want it. I want to spend my life griping about the government and bitching about taxes, scoffing the media and sighing when I voted that there was no real difference between the candidates. Tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum and tweedle-dum-dum. (The last, for the age-challenged, came from the Humphry-Nixon-Wallace presidential race of 1968.)

When the Soviet Union fell, I thought good, it's over, and expected the only change would be that we would be able to live our lives without the threat from the Soviet Union (although I never forgot that China was a communist nuclear power.)

Anericans are isolationists, and the French agitation about hyperpuissance went below our radar. The fact that we could conquer the world was flawed: we'd have to leave home to do it, and we don't want to. The world is a nice place to visit, but.

Look at how many times al Qaeda attacked us and killed Americans before we finally got collectively angry enough to fight back? They were forced to attack us on our home soil before we stopped firing across their bow.

That reluctance to go to war forms American history more than can be said of most other Western countries, especially those which criticize us strongest now. Remember that even our half-hearted attempts to join Europe in colonizing other lands in the 19th century were abject failures, and as Americans citizens continued to strongly disapprove, we dropped the notion.

The anti-war movement is moving to the next platform: Bring the troops home now. I want to bring them home the second their job is done. I want to wave and cheer them, and thank them, and let them eat some good home cooking in peace because that's what they were fighting for.

Whenever someone asks when will that be I ask Do you cook? Because every cook knows that just because the timer goes off don't mean the roast is ready. It's done when it's done. And we test it, and check the potatoes and carrots too. That's when we pop the biscuits into the oven.

Hmph. And the rest of the world looks down on us thinking we are captives of fast food and immediate gratification.

We are a people of faith, hope and charity. We think those good values, decent values, and stubbornly refuse to surrender to the fatalism and cynicism of the Old World. That's not new, that stubborness and independence of mind are an ongoing theme in our history since our inception of a country, and they have served us well.

So we continue to dig in the rubble of an Iranian village. We stick it out in Iraq even though each death - Iraqi, American, British, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, Japanese or Thai - grieves us. We clench our fists and tighten our jaws when we hear of another attack in Israel because we have been made brothers and sisters in the one way nobody wanted: people who continue to endure and hope.

We draw from their example and respond to those who would invoke fear by ignoring the cautions of the media, infusing ourselves with courage and shrugging aside the threat to party hearty in Times Square and honour Shoshana Johnson and, yes, pay tribute to the party-goers who were victims of yesterday's car bomb in Baghdad.

I probably shouldn't say this, but what the hell: WE ROCK!

Posted by: Debbye at 12:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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