To make my last post more clear
I don't approve of what he did with his life, but I also am angered that anyone's death sparks the kind of self-congratulatory celebration I heard in the news this morning.
There is a story:
After Moses led the Children of Israel across the sea, Miriam led the women in singing and dancing. Now the angels were so caught up in all the excitement, that they joined in, singing loud songs of praise, but God replied, My children are dying and you sing?
If it was wrong to rejoice in the death of the Egyptian soldiers who were set upon genocide and enslavement, I cannot imagine that it is good to rejoice in anyone's death. For the same reason, at the Seder, the meal celebrating the freedom from slavery in Egypt, one of the cups of wine has 10 drops of wine removed, one drop for every plague, and the participants are encouraged to think of the havoc these wreaked for the Egyptians.
There is a story:
After Moses led the Children of Israel across the sea, Miriam led the women in singing and dancing. Now the angels were so caught up in all the excitement, that they joined in, singing loud songs of praise, but God replied, My children are dying and you sing?
If it was wrong to rejoice in the death of the Egyptian soldiers who were set upon genocide and enslavement, I cannot imagine that it is good to rejoice in anyone's death. For the same reason, at the Seder, the meal celebrating the freedom from slavery in Egypt, one of the cups of wine has 10 drops of wine removed, one drop for every plague, and the participants are encouraged to think of the havoc these wreaked for the Egyptians.
posted by Plain Foolish | 3:08 PM
4 Comments:
I thought the post was pretty clear, but then maybe we're on the same wavelength about it to begin with.
I didn't watch the news yesterday--even PBS--because I couldn't stand to hear the self-congratulatory blather that I knew would come out of our president's mouth.
We've martyred him. In a sense, we gave them exactly what they wanted--to die fighting for his cause. I don't think it really matters, though, since no matter what we do over there, we're just digging ourselves a bigger hole.
I'm watching and reading news as long as I can even remotely bear to do so. I know that in a few months, any mention of Iraq will have me literally shaking, and my husband will likely filter the news for me.
What astounded me was something I saw in the Washington Post of all places.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801890.html
It talks about how his family mourns for him, even though they disagreed with him. It's from their Style section, and focused on the framing of the death picture, but I was astounded at how much I admired this article in the Post, of all places.
Their title for the article, by the way, was "A Chilling Portrait, Unsuitably Framed"
Man, sometimes people/publications do surprising things.
I can't stand to listen to it any longer because I just get angry and my father and I start yelling at the TV. It's all such a big waste all around--Americans, Iraqis, even Zarqawi. I'm horrified at how little our government understands about their culture, how little our government cares that it doesn't understand, what we've done to their country, all of it. I can hardly even think coherently about it any more--it's just sort of a huge, crackling, blur in my head, like Channel 1 on the television.
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