Quagmire Accomplished

Over a week ago, as the bombs were dropping in Lebanon, I was scheduled to meet a young student of mine who struggles with writing in English--because it is his third language. He's from Lebanon--and when I got to class to meet him, he wasn't there. I proceeded to prepare and make copies and other things I do to get ready to teach a class.

When he came in, he was ashen and could barely speak. My hearing is so bad and his accent so thick that when he breathlessly uttered, "My cousin has been killed,” I heard "hurt." His eyes widened and I quickly realized I had not responded in a way consistent with the seriousness of the situation. He clarified in a louder voice and I nodded my understanding.

Others were filing into class, and so he took his seat. During our discussions about our personal missions and how we see ourselves as citizens in the world, he was passionate and wanting to help his country. But, he's, thankfully, stuck here.

The horror of what is being done in the name of "freedom" by our country and all the others who still believe that violence will bring about peace--is unfathomable! These entrenched hatreds, fueled by fundamentalists on BOTH sides--will continue and threatens to send all of us into a worldwide conflict. I've been feeling no less horrified and hopeless as my student.

Then, I read about an inter-faith group of Arabs and Jews who meet regularly to discuss (peacefully) the problems in the Middle East. Here, in the Detroit area, where we have the largest population of Arab immigrants in the USA, they all live and work side by side--they go to movies, out to eat, they worship and raise families right next door to each other and next door to Jews and Christians--and sometimes the occasional Buddhist.

The point is, there must be a better way for the USA to influence the world toward peaceful coexistence than the route the neo-conservatives have mapped out. The foundation of their beliefs is so flawed, so laden with a lethal combination of ignorance and arrogance, that I fear for all of our futures.

We simply have not absorbed the lessons of the past. In the same way that the Ku Klux Klan was absorbed into Southern culture after Reconstruction, these terrorist groups all over the Middle East are often the only perceived "protection" these people have. When southern whites felt that the "system" in place would not protect them, they wrongfully embraced (sometimes in secret) those whom they believed had their best interests at heart. In the same way that people trapped in inner city poverty will look the other way when the drug kingpin hands out dollar bills to the children, civilians caught in this tragic crossfire are faced with a similar moral dilemma. In the absence of an infrastructure that is vigilantly attacking poverty and injustice, people will turn to the next worst thing. And here we are.