Monday, November 08, 2004

Not so easy to get over...

I keep thinking that I'll get past my sense of dismay over this election, of shame and apology to the world that we couldn't see our way to treating everyone else better, to returning to our role as shining example. But I guess I am impatient. Am definitely not close to being there yet, although the weekend (and some sleep) did help.

Anyway, to my friends in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere, as well as to anyone looking with open-mouthed disbelief at our nation this week (and who I expect will demand an explanation the next time I am identified as an American abroad), feeling the need to vent one more time, I join in this Open Letter to the World...
In the last three and a half years, my government has made war on many of you. It squandered your good will towards us in September 2001, a graciousness which the country has since proved that it did not deserve but for which I am still personally grateful. ... It has declared that your opinion has no bearing on its opinions, even though its actions have made many of your homelands less secure at the expense of securing ours. And although many of you have suffered through unprecedented numbers of terrorist attacks and state-sanctioned acts of violence, most of my fellow Americans still view the one terrorist attack we have suffered to be so exceptional that it justifies the creation of global conditions in which we are likely to suffer more.
...
I will not wait for you to write me applauding the fact that we held an election without blood running in our streets, when the vote we made will most likely mean more blood running in many of yours. I would like to tell you that not all Americans support the things that are done in our name, that I do not support them, that today I now feel as powerless as you do to change them. But all of those things taste somewhat insincere in my mouth. An apology to you from me would be just as arrogant and self-centered, given what you have suffered, as a suckerpunch from my government. My dismay cannot approach the dismay that many of you must feel today... So instead of spouting more words, instead of asking for your forgiveness, let me simply mourn with you and weep for the world to which we belong. ouch, that hurt

I will understand, though, if you'd rather be left alone.

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