The enduring lesson of 9/11: We are one human family | National Catholic Reporter

The enduring lesson of 9/11: We are one human family | National Catholic Reporter by Sarah Christian.  MGB: We do all find solidarity with the refugees, whether they flee Darfur or ISIL.  Moral solidarity, however, is not enough.  Some of these atrocities are our own doing.  Rawanda was easy to ignore because, until this administration, we ignored Africa - mostly in the wake of Somalia.  When it was colonial, it was the problem of others (the same for the Middle East).  Then all of these fights were part of a geopolitical war with the Soviets.  The African countries who embraced Marx were bad, the white countries were good.  Egypt became good when it made peace with Israel, because there is a great deal of solidary with Israel and enmity to those who are its enemies.  Of course, access to resources, whether oil in Saudi and Iraq, or bananas in Mesoamerica was our other guide - and when friendly governments abused their people, it often went unnoticed.  Salvador was news, Gutemala was not.  As long as we put the interests of capital ahead of human rights, the latter will be an after throught unless the cameras notice - of course the Internet has changed that and the political system just cannot cope with that much truth.



So the question reamins what to do next.  Doing something about capitalism here would be a good first start, say by converting to wider employee-ownership - especially of multinationals and firms with a multinational footprint.  Then our ideas of solidarity and equality spread to first those factories and then the countries they reside in.  Of course, that just lays the ground work.  Next, rather than seeking to impose an international regime of our desire all at once, we start by regionalizing at home (say seven regions, each with a regional VP , court of appeals and legislature) and then admit other nations as regions - some of our allies will also regionalize (like France), while others will combine to form a region.  Tyranny is harder if the government is the right size.  No one is admitted who does not have the same basic commitment to human rights and the rule of law and the larger union would see to policing each member (including our regions) on their human rights performance.



Some nations won't go in for a while.  Israel needs to solve its issues with its Muslim citizens and the larger Union should cut it off until it does.  War must be a more frequent option, I am afraid.  Bush thought he was checking of on overthrowing a tyrant - but for Cheney the Iraq war as about oil.  Military action is Sudan, however should be massive and stealthy so the rapists of Darfur are captured and submitted to justice.  The Wahabi scourge is problematic because we ignore Saudi support of it.  Frankly, the Saudi's need an organic women's revolt and a sexual revolution.  The terrorists of 9/11 have mastered the sexual repression the Church has tried to instill in its youth.  A little free love and female equality would have stopped them from buying the insane argument that terrorism is rewarded with compliant virgins in the afterlife. If they had solidarity with their victims, this would have been just another day.