Monday, August 9, 2010

Interesting Juxtaposition

My co-worker's husband had a kidney stone, and he cried and whined and writhed. When a kind woman tried to empathize with him by saying that she had heard that kidney stones were as painful as childbirth, he reacted with outrage. "No woman has EVER felt the kind of pain that I am feeling!"

While Americans are busily venting their outrage that some Muslims want to build a community center right next (kind of) to Holy Ground, the site of the WTC buildings blown away nearly 9 years ago, some Muslims in Afghanistan killed 9 Christians from a missionary group.

Hmmm. Let's see.

There was a tragic loss of life in the WTC buildings. Imagine the horror of choosing to jump from the window, rather than be burned alive. We don't have to imagine the horror, actually, it has been pumped into us for nine years now. TV shows, movies, books, politician speeches, we still get daily doses of The Day That Changed Everything.

Three weeks after The Day That Changed Everything, the US invaded Afghanistan, and has been occupying it ever since, killing civilians daily. How many? We don't know. We don't bother to count. We don't care. But for them, everyday since Oct. 2001 has been a Day That Changes Everything.

While each person killed in the WTC got a picture and a bio for us to memorialize them, the deaths of the people of Afghanistan are part of a daily synopsis of deaths, sometimes one, sometimes 130. Whatever. We know that some of them were brides, on their way to their weddings, some were children, executed after US troops kicked down their doors, but their names and faces are unknown to us.

We do know that Bush called the attack on Afghanistan a Crusade, and that some of the generals make explicit references to killing Muslims, and that most of the Americans attacking Afghanistan and Iraq are Christians, and that most of the people attacked are Muslims.

So while it is the very height of insensitivity for Muslims to build a community center in downtown New York City, it is heart warming and beautiful to have Christian missionaries working in Afghanistan.

Right? Cause there's no pain like our pain.




6 comments:

K.L. Ashley said...

Women have kidney stones.

My mate had one peak out (pain level) in the dead of night and winter high up on a mountain in a blizzard. A call to 911 had the fire department with a para-medic up here regardless. She was tough and did not whine. Made a trip though a canyon for help, but it took care of itself.

Wonder if my comment under "accountability" concerning not only USA military killing Afghans made it over the internet.

wagelaborer said...

Yeah, I know that women have kidney stones. That's how we know that it's like childbirth!

To me, it's similar - large object traveling through small tube!

Your last comment came to my email, but not to the blog.

I don't know why.

K.L. Ashley said...

Freeman interviews PC Robert

Anonymous said...

The world would be a lot better off without all religions. Did you ever read The Family; The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power ? John Lennon had it right when he wrote "Imagine".

wagelaborer said...

I did read that book.

Scary!!

And "Imagine" is my favorite song.

Anonymous said...

I cannot believe how excited everyone is about someone exercising their rights to do what they want with their land - isn't that free market. The same free market that puts toxic dumps in areas where poor people live? Right, just, sensitive - maybe not, but free market - yes.

They could rezone the area to exclude churches.