. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 11:25 PM, Rishab Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> i hope you say this with first-hand experience of staring down
>> barrels of guns.
>
> Do you thrust your hand into the fire to experience burning
> first-hand? If not, I trust the words of someone who has experienced
> it first-hand.
My family has stared down the barrel of many guns. My father came to
the United States as a stateless refugee -- most of his family died at
the hands of people who held nationalism as a primary personal
value. My mother's family also spent far more than their share of the
time with bullets whizzing past them -- she was not born in the United
States either.
I suppose that, because of this, I was taught from an early age to
value freedom, justice and peace over country -- that one should value
a country so long as it embodies humane values, and should cease to
support it when it stops supporting those values. There is nothing
wrong with loving one's nation so long as what one is really valuing
is the advancement of human dignity.
If the policies of one's nation no longer advance human dignity, then
to support one's nation is to support something quite different
entirely -- mindless tribalism ("we are better than them, because they
live there and wear blue tunics and we live here and wear red ones!"),
and, frequently, wasteful violence.
Not all violence is unjustified. I am not a pacifist and would not
stand by while someone attacked my friends or family. However, I
cannot blame others for doing what I would do myself, and attacking
other people to prevent them from peacefully living their lives as
members of another polity strikes me as hypocritical at the very
least.
>> yes, of course, it's always very good to say what other people
>> need, rather than let them decide themselves.
>
> THEM !!? - that is the moot point. Part of the "them" has been driven
> out of Kashmir and turned into refugees in their own country, a
> reality which nobody wants to accept. Or perhaps because its easier to
> pretend and look the other way.
Let me remind everyone of the stories of two other places where
colonialism has managed to blind people for decades and even
centuries.
The first place the British tried out their most excellent policies
was Ireland, where to this day people murderously hate and even kill
each other over trivial differences in religion. (My apologies to
Christians for calling the distinction between Catholicism and
Protestantism trivial.)
Another place they performed this service for mankind was Palestine,
from roughly the first world war to a few years after the second. As a
result of their efficient work, to the present time vast numbers of
people spend their days seething with hatred over what "The Other" did
to them in the last set of mindless atrocities, and plot how they will
get their vengeance (which will, of course, finally teach "The Other"
to stop being violent.)
If one aspires to the peaceful state of Northern Ireland in the 1970s
and 1980s, or perhaps Israel/Palestine today, then clearly the right
move is to accumulate a long list of grievances against The Other and
to never, ever, ever let them go. Feed one's hatreds, remember past
wrongs, and above all, never consider the cost. Then one can win the
admiration of all nations.
Perry
--
Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
