Don't look outside
Don't look outside
Updated 10:50pm (Mla time) Sept 14, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 15, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
BEFORE MICHAEL Moore did "Fahrenheit 9/11," he did "Bowling for Columbine." Though "Fahrenheit" is by far the more popular because of its quite literally incendiary subject and its open indictment of George W. Bush, "Bowling," at least in my book, is the more penetrating. It was no accident that it won the Oscar last year for best documentary. It deserved it.
People tend to think it's just a brief against guns, Nandy Pacheco's favorite crusade. Well, yes, it is, but it is more than that. It asks how Columbine happened-which was where a couple of boys went on a shooting spree, killing 12 students, a teacher and themselves -- and discovers a pretty disturbing answer. Which is that it was an accident waiting to happen. The culture of violence that has permeated America over the centuries made it possible. Guns are both the effects and causes of that violence. The violence, or the paranoia associated with it, has driven citizens to own guns, and the guns themselves have raised the ante on violence. A violence that is ravaging as much the schools of America as the dwelling places of the peoples of the world.
At one point in "Bowling," Moore interviews an official of Lockheed Martin, the biggest weapons-maker in America, whose plant in Littleton is the town's main employer and whose logo is "We are Columbine." The official expresses shock that the Columbine shooting could happen in America, asking, "Why would kids do this?"
Moore asks him if it is not possible that the kids who see their parents go to work building missiles at Lockheed do not think there's any difference between the mass destruction those weapons wreak and the one that happened at Columbine High School. The official is aghast. The missiles they make, he says, are made for defense. "We don't get irritated with somebody, and just 'cause we're mad at them drop a bomb, shoot at them, or fire a missile at them."
Next follows (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World," sung by Louis Armstrong) a long list of what America does when it "gets irritated with somebody." Among the more recent ones:
"1981: Reagan administration trains and funds 'Contras,' 30,000 Nicaraguans die; 1982: US gives millions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians; 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis; 1989: Manuel Noriega, Panama president and CIA agent, disobeys orders from Washington, US invades Panama and removes Noriega, 3,000 Panamanians die; 1991 till Iraq war: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis, UN estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions; 2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in 'aid'; 9/11: Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 Americans."
Americans were at least more introspective during the third anniversary of 9/11, mourning their dead with less strident calls for their government to bomb their tormentors back to the Stone Age. But there were those, notably America's leaders, who continued to talk about the threat posed by those who hate the American way of life. Pray, who are those who hate the American way of life? As Arundrathi Roy put it in an essay shortly after 9/11, who can possibly hate the American athletes who have shown such dazzling feats of physical striving? Who can possibly hate the American novelists and poets who have shown the world such dazzling feats of the imagination? Who can possibly hate America itself, which has bequeathed to the world the democratic ideal, or the unrelenting quest for it?
You ask those same questions and you are bound to get only one answer: George W. Bush and company themselves. They hate the American way of life, if by that is meant the way of life proposed by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and Martin Luther King. The way of life that is resolutely libertarian and dedicated to freedom -- other people's as much as one's own.
Americans may look all they want for the causes of 9/11 in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq, but they will not find the answers there. The causes of 9/11 are not outside, they are within. At the very least, that is because 9/11 is the inevitable consequence of policies that have wreaked more 9/11s upon the world -- i.e., the partial list above -- before even that date, or epithet, or incantation, was invented. Chalmers Johnson used the word "blowback" to describe it (that is the title of his book), the consequences, often unwitting, of America's global policies on America itself. Which are not unlike something blowing up in one's face. 9/11 easily qualifies as a "blowback," the direct effect of American policies toward the Middle East. There's a simpler way to put it, one most people, including Americans, will understand: What goes around comes around.
At the very most, that is so because the causes of 9/11 are the same as the causes of Columbine. They reside in the culture of violence that has America in its grip, a culture of violence that is absent in neighboring Canada for example. The residents of a Canadian city just across the river from Detroit do not even lock their doors and windows when they leave the house. Certainly, they do not build arsenals to defend their homes and property. It is a culture that has grown out of paranoia about strangers coming to rape and pillage, which has spawned more paranoia about outsiders coming to extirpate and annihilate. It is a culture that says it's all right when you get irritated with somebody to just drop a bomb at him, or shoot at him, or fire a missile at him.
Kids who bowl at Columbine tend to learn that lesson pretty quick. So do terrorists who howl in Palestine.
9/11 happened in the American heartland. That is so in more ways than one.
Updated 10:50pm (Mla time) Sept 14, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 15, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
BEFORE MICHAEL Moore did "Fahrenheit 9/11," he did "Bowling for Columbine." Though "Fahrenheit" is by far the more popular because of its quite literally incendiary subject and its open indictment of George W. Bush, "Bowling," at least in my book, is the more penetrating. It was no accident that it won the Oscar last year for best documentary. It deserved it.
People tend to think it's just a brief against guns, Nandy Pacheco's favorite crusade. Well, yes, it is, but it is more than that. It asks how Columbine happened-which was where a couple of boys went on a shooting spree, killing 12 students, a teacher and themselves -- and discovers a pretty disturbing answer. Which is that it was an accident waiting to happen. The culture of violence that has permeated America over the centuries made it possible. Guns are both the effects and causes of that violence. The violence, or the paranoia associated with it, has driven citizens to own guns, and the guns themselves have raised the ante on violence. A violence that is ravaging as much the schools of America as the dwelling places of the peoples of the world.
At one point in "Bowling," Moore interviews an official of Lockheed Martin, the biggest weapons-maker in America, whose plant in Littleton is the town's main employer and whose logo is "We are Columbine." The official expresses shock that the Columbine shooting could happen in America, asking, "Why would kids do this?"
Moore asks him if it is not possible that the kids who see their parents go to work building missiles at Lockheed do not think there's any difference between the mass destruction those weapons wreak and the one that happened at Columbine High School. The official is aghast. The missiles they make, he says, are made for defense. "We don't get irritated with somebody, and just 'cause we're mad at them drop a bomb, shoot at them, or fire a missile at them."
Next follows (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World," sung by Louis Armstrong) a long list of what America does when it "gets irritated with somebody." Among the more recent ones:
"1981: Reagan administration trains and funds 'Contras,' 30,000 Nicaraguans die; 1982: US gives millions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians; 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis; 1989: Manuel Noriega, Panama president and CIA agent, disobeys orders from Washington, US invades Panama and removes Noriega, 3,000 Panamanians die; 1991 till Iraq war: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis, UN estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions; 2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in 'aid'; 9/11: Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 Americans."
Americans were at least more introspective during the third anniversary of 9/11, mourning their dead with less strident calls for their government to bomb their tormentors back to the Stone Age. But there were those, notably America's leaders, who continued to talk about the threat posed by those who hate the American way of life. Pray, who are those who hate the American way of life? As Arundrathi Roy put it in an essay shortly after 9/11, who can possibly hate the American athletes who have shown such dazzling feats of physical striving? Who can possibly hate the American novelists and poets who have shown the world such dazzling feats of the imagination? Who can possibly hate America itself, which has bequeathed to the world the democratic ideal, or the unrelenting quest for it?
You ask those same questions and you are bound to get only one answer: George W. Bush and company themselves. They hate the American way of life, if by that is meant the way of life proposed by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and Martin Luther King. The way of life that is resolutely libertarian and dedicated to freedom -- other people's as much as one's own.
Americans may look all they want for the causes of 9/11 in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq, but they will not find the answers there. The causes of 9/11 are not outside, they are within. At the very least, that is because 9/11 is the inevitable consequence of policies that have wreaked more 9/11s upon the world -- i.e., the partial list above -- before even that date, or epithet, or incantation, was invented. Chalmers Johnson used the word "blowback" to describe it (that is the title of his book), the consequences, often unwitting, of America's global policies on America itself. Which are not unlike something blowing up in one's face. 9/11 easily qualifies as a "blowback," the direct effect of American policies toward the Middle East. There's a simpler way to put it, one most people, including Americans, will understand: What goes around comes around.
At the very most, that is so because the causes of 9/11 are the same as the causes of Columbine. They reside in the culture of violence that has America in its grip, a culture of violence that is absent in neighboring Canada for example. The residents of a Canadian city just across the river from Detroit do not even lock their doors and windows when they leave the house. Certainly, they do not build arsenals to defend their homes and property. It is a culture that has grown out of paranoia about strangers coming to rape and pillage, which has spawned more paranoia about outsiders coming to extirpate and annihilate. It is a culture that says it's all right when you get irritated with somebody to just drop a bomb at him, or shoot at him, or fire a missile at him.
Kids who bowl at Columbine tend to learn that lesson pretty quick. So do terrorists who howl in Palestine.
9/11 happened in the American heartland. That is so in more ways than one.
posted by Dante at 10:37 AM
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