We are deeply saddened by the appalling loss of innocent lives in and around the World Trade Centre in New York City. We feel for those innocents and their relatives because theirs is a tragedy which we have experienced, and continue to experience, on a daily basis in Palestine and Iraq, and which the peoples of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Grenada know only too well, thanks to the United States and its client regimes and states, foremost of whom is the apartheid state of Israel.
As expected, the reactions of the USA and its cronies have been the usual high-flown rhetoric, accompanied by the preparation of public opinion for some mindless act of revenge. Yet, the lesson that ought to be learnt from this tragedy is that you reap what you sow.
The tragedy in New York was evil in consequence. But it was not an attack on "democracy" or the "free world"; rather, it seems to have been the act of desperate people whose despair had driven them to extremes. Instead of revenge, the USA and its cronies should stop and ask themselves what it is that drives people to such extremes.
Behind the desperate people who committed this ghastly act are none other than US foreign policy, and the United States' allies around the world who have aided and abetted Washington in its crimes in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.
For the US people collectively, this is not a time for jingoism and xenophobia, but a time to reflect on what it is that has made them so hated by many peoples in the world. They must understand that what has happened to them is the result of the "kicking ass" and "turkey shoots" which many of them and their sick and ignorant media have come to be so proud. They must understand that others too can "kick ass" and go on "turkey shoots", though it may take them a little longer.
What happened in New York is a massive human tragedy. But,
for the sake of those who have perished, let some good come out
of this so that such tragedies are never repeated. There is only
so much kicking and shooting you can do before you suffer a fate
worse than that you have inflicted on your victims. We hope that
people in the USA will begin to realize that they and their country
are not impregnable and, consequently, begin to behave more responsibly
around the world.