America: Forgive but Not Forget

As anyone who has read my hubs has probably guessed, I've been a little obsessed with 911 lately. For me, the event is symbolic of the moral collapse of America. It led to the horrors of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration, has been the excuse for Obama's illegal interventions in Pakistan and Yemen and the justification for the U.S. orchestrated NATO destruction of Libya. 911 was the beginning of the end for freedom and democracy in the United States and arguably has played a large role in the collapse of the U.S. economy.

Because of the lack of journalistic integrity, the full scope of the horrors inflicted on the people of Iraq has been largely hidden from the American public, but a recent article, Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld, You Are Under Arrest, graphically exposes the war crimes that were committed there. The images are so graphic, in fact, I can't bring myself to paste any here, but I will quote some text:

Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the official Army investigation into Abu Ghraib, said in his report:“there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

These were not borderline war crimes, either. As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said: “we’re talking about rape and murder here… We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.”

So what's all this have to do with forgiveness? Well, I'm a little behind the times here, but in August there was a Day of Forgiveness that obviously didn't get the air time the 911 Remembrance Day farce got. The San Jose Mercury News ran a piece about it. In California veterans seek forgiveness with help from Stanford project, journalist Paul Liberatore tells the stories of Iraq vets who came back from the war carrying burdens of guilt and disenchantment. One of them, 27 year old Marine Jordan Towers went to Iraq a true believer and came back disenchanted. One of the things that disturbed Towers upon his return was the indifference of the American public to what was going on in Iraq:

"I'd go to downtown San Francisco and people were in the coffee shops every day, going about their business, not paying attention to the two wars we were fighting," he recalled. "I was shocked, really shocked. They didn't really know how people were suffering over there."

That's what continues to disturb me about Americans to this day. They seem oblivious to the fact that they are passive participants in atrocities. Worse, many of them actively support continuing atrocities by accepting the lies they are told and not listening to the voices of dissent. They write 911 truthers off as "conspiracy theory nuts" when in fact the most passionate seekers for 911 truth are anything but and include families of victims, eyewitnesses and experts in their fields. They believe Obama's rhetoric when he calls the invasion of Libya "humanitarian intervention" when it was nothing but a coldly calculated act of destruction. If you doubt that, just ask yourself why the U.S. hasn't invaded Saudi Arabia, arguably the most oppressive "regime" in the Middle East or intervened on behalf of the people of Burma or spent trillions of dollars on humanitarian aid to supply water and food to drought stricken African nations. Instead, they targeted Libya's civilian water supply, hospitals, schools and other vital civilian infrastructures. Why?

Obviously, I'm not in a very forgiving mood, so I'll ask again: What's all this have to do with forgiveness? This time I'll answer my own question. I don't want to become the evil I see, so I continually keep my instinctive reactions in check to the best of my ability. I've been a fan of the amygdala, a pair of almond shaped organs in the brain that are responsible for our "fight or flight" instincts, for about ten years now. I say "a fan" because when I learned how to consciously keep their behaviour in check, it went a long way towards my learning how to view the world compassionately and objectively. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. I just stumbled across an article that talks a little about the amygdala this morning and that led to the title of this hub. It's called A Brain on Forgiveness and is worth a read. Back in about 2004, I wrote a fairly detailed article of my own about the amygdala and it still holds water. You can read it here if you like.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to hide my head in the sand and pretend that everything is okay when it's not. It doesn't make much sense, either, to let anger or fear get the best of me. We're not going to get anywhere until we make a sea change in our collective consciousness and learn to think and act constructively and compassionately. That should be obvious to anyone. So, Donald Rumsfeld et al: your deeds can be forgiven, but they must not be forgotten.