We must never forget there was another September 11th, long before our own, when so many dreams were crushed. While our September 11, 2001 was imposed on us by Islamic terrorists, the leaders of our great nation imposed its own form of terrorism with the September 11, 1973 military coup against the democratically elected government of Chile.
I recently saw a film on Eric Lomax, a British officer in World War II, who had been tortured by the Japanese in Thailand while working on the infamous Bangkok-Burma railroad. Much of his subsequent life was destroyed by his memories of that experience and his desire for revenge. More than 40 years later, he tracked down the man he held responsible for his suffering, an interpreter named Takashi Nagase. Nagase had become a Buddhist monk and had spent the postwar decades denouncing the war crimes he helped commit. Lomax forgave his enemy, “Sometime the hatred has to stop,” and found some redemption.
The other day I heard we are endanger of losing 1/3-1/2 of all our birds in North America due to global warming. In another story a man was arrested for trying to stop a coal delivery and the prosecutor dropped most of the charges because he sympathized with the act. Wouldn’t it be nice if on these days of remembrance we could try to understand what made our enemies so crazy, if we could just reach out and identify our common interests? Wouldn’t it be nice if the war to restore and maintain a saluborous environment would be the war that finally ended all wars?
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