I'm talking about a person who knows someone who was harmed. A person who knows someone who was raped. A person who received the body of their beheaded child.
I forgive those individuals for feeling murderous rage. I would too.
I know that in America, a lot of times, the family forgives the murderer when he is tried, convicted and sentenced. It is usually done as a result of deep Christian faith. I also know that sometimes, a family watches an execution of someone condemned to death for a heinous crime, and that is how they feel that justice has been done.
In America, we turned on the Muslim-Americans and Middle Easterners in our country with a vengeance after 9/11. We were sure that all of them were terrorists, even though they weren't. The violence included murder, physical assaults, arson, vandalism of places of worship and other property damage, death threats, and public harassment. And when Bush waved the flag to go after Iraq, Congress said yes, thinking erroneously that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. We decimated that country, out of extreme anger. We perpetrated war crimes and were never punished.
And now, like hypocrites, we question Israel. From the most conservative estimates, we killed at least 100,000 Iraqis including 66,000 civilians between 2004 and 2009. Less conservative numbers say 600,000 to 1,000,000.
In 2002, my roommate was an Iraqi and he was afraid to tell anyone. Deep inside of me, I wondered if he was a terrorist. That's how bad it was. He was just an average guy working on an engineering degree at NCA&T, dealing with the lusts and loves of young adulthood. You would have thought he was learning to make bombs. In the back of my mind.
Maybe, just maybe, in 2003, you were a lone voice crying out for the civilian deaths in Iraq. But most Americans were not. We were angry, we were bloodthirsty, AND we convinced other European countries to join us in the fight.
Yes, condemning Israel makes a lot of people hypocrites. Because 9/11/2001 was a long time ago, older people don't remember, and our young people didn't live through it.
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