Reaction to Boston Marathon Bombing From an Iraq Veteran and Longtime Boston Resident

Reaction to Boston Marathon Bombing From an Iraq Veteran and Longtime Boston Resident


April 17, 2013 by bjjangles












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If we’re going to become overwhelmed with grief and sadness about
what happened at the Boston marathon, while the corporate news stations
are propagating fear, teaching us to be suspicious of our neighbor,
accept more security cameras all over our cities, and less and less
freedom… let the real fear be over the fact that we have been socialized
to care only about victims when they share our language and culture,
when they look like us, when they share our national identity… and to
not care about the countless victims of violence and terror the world
over, and those living through far greater violence on a daily basis,
often as a result of our own government’s actions ‘on our behalf’.

If we’re going to cry over the loss of innocent lives, of people we
never knew, let’s ask ourselves why we aren’t crying every single day,
when a cafe explodes in Baghdad, when a village is leveled by a drone in
Yemen, or a school is mistaken for a ‘terrorist’ headquarters in
Pakistan, and wiped off the map. With reports coming out that three
people were killed in the bombings in Boston, let’s not forget that
we’re losing an average of 22 veterans of our armed forces every single
day to suicide, and one active member of our military to suicide every
single day.

We may have been shielded from violence for the majority of our lives
by the white picket fence and the rest of the American dream ideology.
In reality, we live in an extremely violent and unhealthy world, and our
government is one of the greatest purveyors of this violence. It has
largely been kept out of sight and out of mind, besides September 11th
2001, when the death of 3,000 of our fellow humans shook Americans to
their core. Out of that day of violence and terror, grew twelve years of
non-stop violence and terror, all supposedly in the name of democracy,
of freedom, of peace.

Other than being used to propagate fear in the American public, to
train us to say something when we ‘see something’, other than being used
as the excuse to begin ‘preemptive’ wars around the globe, and strip
countless freedoms that took generations upon generations to secure, we
have been living in a bubble, living in a world of illusion, in a world
largely free of the violence and terror that has a stranglehold on
countless millions of our fellow humans. This is sad, any loss of life
is sad. This also hits close to home, with the city of Boston being my
home for the past five years, and my home city all my life.

I didn’t know the people killed, and as far as I know, I didn’t know
any of the people wounded. I also didn’t know any of the innocent
civilians killed or wounded by inhumane violence and terror today in
Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya, in
Uganda, in the Congo, or any of the innocent civilians killed or wounded
by landmines scattered across South East Asia, from the wars of a
different generation. I didn’t know any of the victims of domestic
violence across America and across the world, I didn’t know any of the
victims of gun violence in Chicago, or Los Angeles, or in Mexico, and
other parts of Central and South America. I didn’t know any of the
people killed or wounded by violence and terror today anywhere in the
world, but my emotions didn’t change when I heard that this violence had
made its way to Boston.

I didn’t throw my worldview out the window when I heard that violence
had reached the presumed safety of the Boston Marathon. I won’t shed
any more tears for the innocent lives lost in Boston today, than I do
every single day for the innocent lives lost all over the world. We are
all connected. We are all one. And until we see this, until we can see
that all of humanity is interconnected, and your pain and suffering is
my pain and suffering, your joy and happiness is my joy and happiness,
when my supposed ‘enemy’ is killed, humanity is weaker for it, until we
view the daily deaths of countless Afghan, Pakistani, Yemeni (etc)
civilians by our armed drones, the same as we would the deaths of the
people at the Boston marathon, and ultimately, the same as the death of
our family members, we will never evolve as a species and experience our
full potential as human beings.

It shouldn’t matter the city or town that you live in. Someone going
to sleep tonight in Cleveland, shouldn’t be thinking, ‘at least it
didn’t happen here’. Someone going to sleep tonight in Paris, shouldn’t
be thinking ‘at least it wasn’t here.’ Someone going to sleep tonight in
Bethlehem shouldn’t be thinking ‘at least it wasn’t me’. Someone going
to sleep tonight in Baghdad shouldn’t be thinking, ‘serves them right’.
Likewise, we shouldn’t feel that way when we see or hear about violence
south of the border, or all across the Middle East, or throughout
Africa, or in the housing projects on the edge of town. We are all
connected, and when something like this happens in Boston, Cleveland
should feel our pain. Paris should feel our pain. Bethlehem should feel
our pain. Baghdad should feel our pain.

And as part of humanity, we should and must feel their pain.

When we are indifferent, and sometimes often celebratory to the news of
bombs dropping over foreign cities, we shouldn’t expect anything less
from the people of those cities when it happens here, though we deserve
their solidarity, as they deserve ours. Boston is certainly not new to
violence. The ‘city on a hill’ was founded on blood-soaked indigenous
land. The parts of the city shackled with extreme poverty, drugs, and
the violence that often accompanies it, live with violence on a daily
basis. It’s nothing new, but the reason why so many of us are shocked in
these situations is, not that it happened, but how it happened, where
it happened, and to whom it happened.

People with the luxury to train for and run marathons, are often from
more privileged segments of our society, and not exposed to this sort
of violence. For a number of the runners from war-torn countries
however, this sort of violence is far too familiar. When this sort of
violence happens, wherever it happens, we need to feel the pain of the
victims, to share in their suffering, their loss, their hurt.

From the far reaches of space, the planet earth looks like a tiny
dot. That tiny dot is all of us. Just as our bodies have billions of
different things making them run, so too does the earth. We are one,
with each other, with the oceans, with the mountains, with the deserts,
with the trees, with the sun and the moon and the stars. When you break
your toe, your entire body is impacted by it, and doesn’t function the
same way that it did before. Instead of thinking of people in whatever
country it might be, as ‘Other’, let’s instead see them as different
parts of the same body that we all share.

What happened at the Boston marathon is sad, and my heart goes out to
my native city, but let’s not allow ourselves to shed tears
selectively. Let’s not allow ourselves to become enraged when it happens
close to home, yet remain indifferent when it happens anywhere else in
the world. My heart goes out to the victims in Boston, and to their
loved ones, the same as it does to the innocent people being blown to
bits as I write this, by our own tax dollars, in OUR name. My heart also
goes out to the 22 veterans that will kill themselves today, perhaps
for many of the reasons that I’ve mentioned. They got to see humanity,
and their hearts ache for it. Their hearts ache because they have
learned a hard lesson that we are all indeed one, that we are all
humanity, and humanity is all of us, and they see the socialized
indifference of their fellow Americans, the alligator tears shed when
there is a school shooting, or a bombing in a Western city such as
Boston, but the human beings that they crossed paths with aren’t even
acknowledged. They see their friends and neighbors living in a world of
illusion, in relative peace in a violent world.

Let’s pray for the dead and wounded in Boston, but let’s not forget
the dead and wounded from the far more destructive bombings in
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Baghdad, and everywhere else throughout
the world, throughout the ages, where senseless acts of violence have
shed innocent blood. What happened in Boston is terrorism. What we are
doing all over the world with our predator drones is terrorism. Our
nation’s prison industry is terrorism.

How we treat our poor, our disabled, our sick, our elderly, is terrorism.

The fact that the average number of veteran suicides has steadily
increased over the past few years, and the mountains of red tape are
getting thicker, that these men and women are feeling evermore hopeless,
and the government that our tax dollars fund sits idly by, using band
aids where delicate surgery is needed, looking at the symptoms and never
the root causes, this is, in my eyes, nothing short of terrorism. The
bombings in Boston are sure to have a lengthy life in our national news
cycle, reminding us how we felt in the fall of 2001, reminding us that
we need to live in fear, that we need to buy more guns and install
bigger locks on our doors. Reminding us to say something, when we ‘see
something’.

No good tragedy goes unexploited; we will see countless victims,
countless residents of Boston, countless ‘man on the street’ interviews,
calling for ‘justice’. We will be distracted to the point that our
government will most likely try to do something that some of us might
otherwise notice. My heart goes out to North Korea. My heart goes out to
Iran. My heart goes out to Arabs, who have made for a great scapegoat
this past decade. My heart goes out to the Muslim mother shopping at the
Whole Foods next to Government Center, afraid once again to wear her
hijab. And to the Arab man who will once again be painted as a
‘potential threat to our national security’ simply for coming from the
‘wrong’ line of ancestors, at the wrong time in history.

How would we react if it was a neo-nazi, or a member of the tea
party, or an anarchist that grew out of the occupy Wall Street movement?
Why do we feel different when the newsman says that the suspect was
speaking Arabic? Why have we bought into more than a decade of
propaganda? and, why did they have to remind us? Why now, is there a
renewed need of American patriotism? Are Army recruitment numbers down?
Do we have our sights set on dark-skinned Muslims in yet another
resource-rich country, so we need to renew fear and hatred towards
people who look like them? Did the FBI know about this? Did they plan it
and provide funding for it? And if they didn’t know about it, are all
of the billions that we throw at DHS, DOD, the CIA and FBI, and in
militarizing our local police departments, and all the freedom and
liberties that we have happily handed over to big brother in the name of
security, is all that worth it?

Boston could have installed security cameras every 10 feet, they
could have been monitoring the phone calls and emails of everyone in New
England, and this would have still happened. Things like this will
always happen, no matter how much freedom is taken from us. No matter
how many countries we invade and occupy, no matter how much time TSA
takes to molest 9 year olds and 90 year olds. The threat isn’t some
sinister brown man praising Allah, the threat is fear. Will we succumb
to fear? Will we give in? Will we believe what we’re told to believe?

We will no doubt be led to view the Boston Police department as
heroes, forgetting how they treated non-violent protesters, just a
little over a year ago, forgetting how they used violence and
intimidation and fear to control the non-violent masses. I will never
forget the elbow that I took to the face by one Boston cop, and the over
thirty hours that I spent behind bars during the two times I was
arrested for civil disobedience, rather, for naively thinking that the
1st amendment actually meant something. These men and women aren’t
heroes, by their actions in October and December 2011, the majority of
the ones that I encountered are cowardly, armed thugs.

I will never forget the decorated Vietnam vet that I saw tackled to
the ground, left dazed and bloodied. It wasn’t a firefighter that
tackled him, that’s for sure. The heroes, as with 9/11, are the fire
department and the EMS, not the police. Regular, everyday people… the
‘common man’ like peace activist and Gold Star father Carlos Arredondo,
rushing to the rescue in a split second. We take care of each other,
it’s our job as humans, and nobody exemplifies this more so than Carlos,
someone who saw two sons become casualties of war.

Let’s try not to forget the TRUTH in situations like this. Let’s try
not to, for a second time, buy into their fear mongering and color codes
and their terror threat warnings. Let’s try not to forget how the
Boston police department and DHS treated a group of non-violent
protesters in the fall of 2011. Let’s not start thinking that they’re
our friends. Let’s not act any differently when we leave home tomorrow,
than we did today. Let’s shed tears and morn, but for the whole of
humanity, not for a few people. The few are indeed the whole.

In the words of Led Zeppelin, ‘All are one and one is all. My heart
breaks a little bit more today with the loss of life in Boston, since
the whole of humanity just got a little weaker. Let’s rise up, let’s not
cower in fear. People died today in Boston, hopefully through this
tragic loss we can grow, and regain some of our humanity. If we shed
tears today, let’s shed them in solidarity with the rest of humanity,
mourning their own losses all over the world. Let’s not forget the words
of FDR, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’.

I will leave you with the words of the late, great Bill Hicks “The
world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on
it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The
ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and
it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a
while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to
wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people
have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don’t worry;
don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.” And we … kill those
people. “Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him
up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my
family. This has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill the
good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the
demons run amok … But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And
we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no
work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now,
between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on
your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see
all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now,
to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses
each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the
poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human
being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and
outer, forever, in peace.”


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