After school today, I and two friends headed for a rally and a talk about the US-backed war on Yemen and the US relationship with Saudi Arabia. Besides being freezing cold and sparsely populated, our rally was interrupted by frequent shouts from people I can less call counterprotestors than just agitators. "Bomb them!" they shouted while we talked about Yemen. We already are, I wanted to say. Then the cry gave way to "No one cares!" which I found distinctly disturbing. Perhaps these people yelling were just doing it to let off steam, to aggravate someone, to express real annoyance that we were talking about an issue so seemingly irrelevant to them, but at all the protest and rallies and demonstrations I've been to, never have the counterprotestors shouted "No one cares."
I was asked to speak at the rally, and I hadn't wanted to--speeches I can do, when I have time to write something up ahead of time. Shouting into a microphone for all of the surrounding city to hear is not something I thought I'd do. But as I stood at the side, getting colder and listening to the chants of "No one cares," I decided I had to say something. When the event organizers ambled by again and asked if I had anything to say yet, I said yes.
It's been a long time coming that I can open my mouth and trust the words that fall out. But I took the microphone and spoke--about the danger of ignorance, about the privilege of not knowing or caring, about blowback and how our indifference will come back to bite us.
The irony was bitter, therefore, when a couple of hours later my friend got a Twitter alert informing her that there had been mass shootings in Paris. The death toll so far was about 30 people, but only minutes later, we watched it climb to 60, then 118. At the time I write this, it is estimated at 120 to 150, depending on the souce, though it may rise higher still. Details are fuzzy and reports are garbled, but one account claims one of the shooters said this was in retaliation for French involvement in Syria, which makes it reminiscent of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris and the Boston Marathon bombing more than a year ago. Both of these were acts of violence ostensibly in response to Western intervention in and brutal mistreatment of Muslim countries, and therefore both were examples of blowback. While I was talking about the importance of caring about the world even when ignoring sounds better, and people around me were shouting "No one cares, bomb them," another dose of blowback was being cooked up.
Even now, before the dust has even settled, what I am afraid of is the aftermath. The response. The further blowback it may engender.
When I got home, my family was discussing the attacks, anguished and dismal. My brother called it a lose-lose situation--if we bomb the terrorists, we create more, but if we don't, then they think they've won, he said. "What about non-military solutions?" I said, incredulous. What about negotiations and humanitarian aid? To dichotomize our response options as to bomb or not to bomb narrows as well the possible outcomes: more chaos and instability. War is not the answer. We've tried it and tried it, and had it been the answer to our problems, we wouldn't be dealing with the fallout of our militaristic choices now. But it wasn't. And we are. And as I was trying to warn at the rally tonight, it's only so long until not just France but we as well experience drastic, large-scale blowback from the choices we have made.
But for now, I anticipate a response in the pattern of our habitual militarism. It took only three people dead after the Boston Marathon bombing to shut down the city, send in the SWAT teams, and conduct a massive manhunt. What kind of reaction will as many as 150 deaths spark? Already, French president Hollande has declared, "We will lead the fight… It will be merciless." The US promises to stand by France's response to the attacks, as does the UK. Meanwhile, US cities have also ramped up police vigilance and wiretaps/surveillance data analysis. The NYPD has deployed heavily armed teams to "sensitive French sites in the city," according to Time magazine, although "there is no credible or specific intelligence about threats to the United States."
No, there was no evidence that we were under threat, because this time the attack wasn't aimed at us--though it is our policies that the assailants were supposedly reacting to (the same geopolitical, militaristic, profiteering, imperialist, American-exceptionalist policies that we employ around the world, from Yemen to Afghanistan to Libya and onward, which have caused so much damage and may yet cause more, if they comprise our response to these bombings)--but next time it could be us in the crossfire. One day it will be, if we do not alter our reckless, deadly course.
I don't think we'll be saying "No one cares" then.
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