9/11 : Never Forget, Never Remember …

How is it we are told to Never Forget September 11th & the nearly 3000 lives taken yet, in the same breath, we Never Remember the unjust “wars” exacted in retribution or the hundreds of thousands of blameless, faceless Iraqi & Afghani fatalities?

There is no exchange rate for human suffering. All human life is sacred; all murder unholy.

At the beach, now, and I look up to see more of this short-sighted deceitful propaganda in the skies!

Of course, September 11th was horrible, but Never Forget is terrible advice, considering how the US handled that tragedy (George Bush’s “Crusade”) and the greater atrocities this led to in the Middle East/Muslim world which we are all still suffering the consequences of.

This is why I say Never Forget is bad spiritual advice (and in poor taste) when one has exacted revenge that far exceeds initial loss.

By all means, honor your dead but respect, too, the millions whose innocent blood was shed.

It’s unseemly to keep one's wounds open, while downplaying the great pain that we've inflicted on others. There is wisdom, humility and even self- preservation in honoring one's suffering & setting it aside, to Live.

Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.
― Nietzsche

"If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember."
...
“Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb? ” ― Gibran

Perhaps, it’s time to begin forgiving others so that, one day, we can forgive ourselves... Yet, it’s a perversity of human nature that when one finds it hard to forgive themselves for wrongs, they find it even harder to forgive those they’ve wronged...

It’s only fair, we belong to a larger (grieving) human family. Privileging pain is another unfortunate face of this so-called American Exceptionalism...

True understanding does not continue to look back and keep count.

Instead consider the continued loss of innocent others, Americans and otherwise, in this so-called war on terror...

“Indeed, one of the unquestioned assumptions of such rites has been the specialness of our dying as Americans — the lopsided value we have placed on American lives lost that September day, compared to the men, women, and children who die...around the world, often in circumstances at least as horrific as the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

As anthropologist Talal Asad perceptively puts it, “human life has differential exchange value in the marketplace of death when it comes to ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ peoples” and “this is necessary to a hierarchical global order.”

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

—Gibran

[art by Gibran]

words & art by Khalil Gibran