Posted by
Curt Day on Saturday, November 07, 2009 11:49:14 AM
When I was young, a horrible crime was committed in a major American city due to silence. A man attacked a woman. He fled when she screamed but returned when no one responded to her cries for help. This continued until finally this man killed his victim. Though over 30 people audibly witnessed the crime, no one intervened or even called the police.
Of course, those who were silent on that night do not represent America, or do they? We certainly cry out when we or our friends and family are assaulted. We also find that we are willing to act as a good Samaritan from time to time. But how do we respond when the victims we see and hear are targets of our own government and its foreign policies? Are we silent? Do we brush such stories away and focus on happy thoughts?
In an article containing an acceptance speech by Australian journalist John Pilger, Pilger talks about this kind of silence practiced by his own country as well as its allies. We might want to compare the silence of those 30 plus people whose inaction made a person's death inevitable with our own silence about the crimes of our country's policies because it shows a disturbing duplicity.
On the one hand, being silent about a crime became deadly,
but mentioning the deaths of thousands is considered a conversation killer.
On the one hand, remaining silent while a person was being murdered was shameful,
but being silent about the deaths of thousands is considered polite.
Pilger talks about this selectivity when he says that our invasions are not invasions and our crimes are not crimes. In parallel to that, he notes that we have divided the world into worthy and unworthy victims. Worthy victims are those who suffered because of what our enemies did with such victims including those who died on 9-11, Israelis who are killed by terrorism, and Kurds who were killed by Saddamn Hussein. On the other hand, unworthy victims include Afghan civilians, Palestinians, and Kurds killed by Turkey who is an ally of the US.
The link to Pilger's speech is below and is well worth reading even when reading just part of it.
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=555