Dave Barry's column

[WEW]

I just read this. It just got posted, and I wanted others to see it too. If someone else has already posted, sorry for the duplicate.

[Oicu812]

What I can’t get out of my mind is the fact that they used our own planes. I grew up in the Cold War, when we always pictured the threat as coming in the form of missiles – sleek, efficient death machines, unmanned, hurtling over the North Pole from far away. But what came, instead, were our own commercial airliners, big friendly flying buses coming from Newark and Boston with innocent people on board. Red, white and blue planes, with United'' and American’’ written on the side. The planes you’ve flown in and I’ve flown in. That’s what they used to attack us. They were able to do it in part because our airport security is pathetic. But mainly they were able to do it because we are an open and trusting society that simply is not set up to cope with evil men, right here among us, who want to kill as many Americans as they can.

That’s what’s so hard to comprehend: They want us to die just for being Americans. They don’t care which Americans die: military Americans, civilian Americans, young Americans, old Americans. Baby Americans. They don’t care. To them, we’re all mortal enemies. The truth is that most Americans, until Tuesday, were only dimly aware of their existence, and posed no threat to them. But that doesn’t matter to them; all that matters is that we’re Americans. And so they used our own planes to kill us.

And then their supporters celebrated in the streets.

[MsRobyn]

I read the essay and bookmarked it. For the first time all week, I cried. I actually cried.

When he’s serious, he is VERY touching. His recollections of the Vietnam war in Dave Barry Turns 50 were some of the most well-written, least-dramatic words I’d ever read on the subject.

Robin

[bibliophage]

I changed the title of this thread from MPSIMS to the more descriptive Dave Barry’s column.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

[Verrain]

I was waiting for his words and was not disappointed. He does have a way of cutting to the heart of things. Well said Dave.

[Cat_Whisperer]

My fiance and I just listened to Dave Barry Turns 50 on a long car trip over the weekend, and I remember thinking on Tuesday about how he said his generation grew up in fear, living in the shadow of the cold war, and that now our generation can experience what his did. And then I cried.

[sjc]

originally posted by Dave Barry
I’m not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don’t set out to kill innocent people. We don’t cheer when innocent people die.

I thought he wrote a fairly level-headed and honest column, but this is perhaps a bit of an innacuracy. Historically and probably even in the present Americans have set out to kill innocent people and have also cheered when innocent people die. Sometimes we do not know they are innocent, but they are. I personally have never killed anyone, inocent or otherwise; I suspect this is the case for the majority of Americans as well. I try not to cheer at anyone’s death; I am not so sure about my fellow citizens, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t want to list all the depressing incidences of Americans who have intentionally killed innocent people. The fact is that I am probably unaware of the majority of the cases anyway. There are quite a few Americans behind bars for killing each other. We bomb targets that are bound to kill innocent civilians. We send money and weapons to countries that kill and abuse the civil rights of many innocent people. These are just basic descriptions of some things I know that American citizens do and have done. I don’t even want to think about the stuff I don’t know about (well actually I do, but it is a chilling thought).

I am not saying we are the scum of the earth, I am just saying that Americans are not so pure that none of us have killed, or cheered the killing, of an innocent person. If we are going to speak of Americans as a unified whole then we have to include those of us who have had a hand in the killing of innocents. (This includes every president we’ve had.*)

*I can’t really back this up beyond a common sense and a few examples. Few, if any, of our Presidents actually killed innocent people with their own hands, but they undoubtedly have all had a connection to killing innocent people.

Examples: War Presidents: G. Washington (Revolutionary War), J. Madison (1812?), A. Lincoln (Civil War), W. McKinley (Spanish-American War), W. Wilson (WWI), FDR (WWII), H. Truman (WWII-Hiroshima, Nagasaki), D. Eisenhower (Korea), J.F. Kennedy (Vietnam), L.B. Johnson (Vietnam), R. Nixon (Vietnam), G.H. Bush (Gulf War).
-I know I’m missing a few up there, especially in the 19th century and those involved in lesser known wars. Is the peace-keeping effort in Kossovo an example of a war? Then Bill Clinton is a war President.

Military Presidents: G. Washington, A. Jackson, Z. Taylor, J. Polk (?), B.Harrison (?), W.H. Harrison (?), U.S. Grant, T. Roosevelt, D. Eisenhower.
-I’m not mentioning Kennedy, Lincoln, Nixon, Bush senior and probably a few others who served in the military.

This is just the obvious stuff, if you add in stuff like the wars against the Native Americans and the CIA’s Covert Operations, then you probably can include every American President.

[Agrippina]

*Originally posted by sjc *
**

originally posted by Dave Barry
I’m not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don’t set out to kill innocent people. We don’t cheer when innocent people die.

I thought he wrote a fairly level-headed and honest column, but this is perhaps a bit of an innacuracy. Historically and probably even in the present Americans have set out to kill innocent people and have also cheered when innocent people die.**

I think this was a hugely ignorant statement on his part, brought on by emotions instead of logic. He’s a baby boomer. Surely he would know about the innocent lives killed by American in Vietnam. Where does he think all that napalm went? Or those atomic bombs in 1945?

Other than that, I agree it’s a good column.

[flyboy]

I’m not a huge DB fan, but I have to admit, this column is his best work ever. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Tenar]

Oh, SJC.

Has our government done terrible things? Yes. Have giant U.S. spawned corporations done terrible things? Yes. Did we intern the Japanese during WWII? Yes. (Did we kill them? No!) Have individual U.S. soldiers committed rapes and other atrocities, have we condoned slavery, have we given cholera blankets to Native Americans, have we executed innocent men and women? Yes, yes, yes, yes! Do children and babies sometimes die when we enforce trade blockades on countries that have attacked us or their neighbors? Yes. Did Timothy McVeigh slaughter hundreds of innocent people to make a point, and was he an American? Yes!

None of this takes away from the fact that, as a whole, as a nation, our intentions are generally good and our attitude towards innocents is at worst benign.

Although we have, indeed, killed innocents in wars and military strikes–as has every nation and civilization in history that has ever participated in armed conflict–we have NEVER hijacked four planes full of noncombatants and driven them into buildings full of people for no other reason than to commit the worst possible slaughter on the greatest possible number of people in order to instill maximum terror, nor do I think we would – even if provoked, even in Afghanistan. Even today.

Although Barry may have overstated the case, the fact remains that while atrocities of all types are, indeed, possible in our society, they are not promoted or condoned. Where they are not immediately decried and deplored, they are later. People who commit them know they will have to flee or hide their actions, because they will not be responded to with dancing in the streets. And we have never, in the history of our nation, lionized suicide bombers, though no doubt some few (and I do mean few, very literally) individuals have.

As a society, are we dragging Afghanis out into the streets and beating them to death? Are we fitting them with burning tire necklaces, smashing their windows, setting fire to their stores? Have we attempted to outlaw Islam, or set a bounty on Palestinians? No. And No. And No. We are not perfect, but we do the best we can.

In the meantime, can we just appreciate Mr. Barry’s column as an emotional response from a man in pain to a people in pain? Although accuracy is always valued, this is not a Great Debate.

[Jeannie]

Thank you for posting that link. I think that Dave Barry sums up my feelings, and he says it far better than I ever could.

[Ferrous]

When he’s serious, he is VERY touching. His recollections of the Vietnam war in Dave Barry Turns 50 were some of the most well-written, least-dramatic words I’d ever read on the subject.

Ditto his chapter on Hiroshima in (I think it was) Dave Barry’s The Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need.

[Lucki_Chaarms]

The Hiroshima thing was in Dave Barry Does Japan. I really love this column too though. Good on him for writing it like he did.

LC

[drm]

I love Dave Barry, loved that column, and I sincerely hope that he’s right about Americans. If he is I can definately stop worrying about more innocent lives being lost.