The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts)
February 26, 2007 Monday

Choosing the killing fields

By Ruth Bass

RICHMOND

Eve takes a lot of blame in this world, but when you stop to think
about it, all she did was succumb to the temptation of eating a
beautiful apple. Snow White did that, too, and she subsequently
turned into the fairest of them all.

Like many people since, Eve was deceived by a snake when she should
have screamed and run. But she didn’t kill anyone — that was left to
a couple of guys named Cain and Abel. And ever since that one man
killed his brother, we’ve been following suit. The worst was in our
own Civil War when we were killing, at the very least, our cousins if
not our brothers.

If there indeed be a brotherhood of man — and lots of world history
moments defy that concept — we’re observing that kinship by killing
it. The process requires waffling — the Brits, once our sworn
enemies, are now our best buddies in war, in peace and now, again, in
war.

In our early days, white men decided the dark-skinned Indians needed
to be put in their place. They moved in on Indian lands, failing to
notice that Wampanoags and Narragansetts and Mohicans didn’t have a
Registry of Deeds because they thought land belonged to all and to no
one.

When the Indians took offense, the killing began, and it was brutal,
extending almost coast to coast. The survivors now know they should
claim ownership of land, and they are.

At one time, we embraced the former head of the Cuban government,
then we decided we didn’t like him (we never should have liked him),
so when Fidel Castro seized power, the United States was in the front
row applauding.

That didn’t even last through the second curtain call.

The Ottoman Empire set out to slaughter all the Armenians and just
about succeeded, with a million dead and the rest fleeing what later
became Turkey. Hitler targeted millions of Jews, then branched out
into killing thousands of non-Jews in his fervent quest for a more
perfect "race." We once were lined up with Saddam Hussein against
Iran, thought he was doing fine and gave him equipment and our
"moral" support. We did the same for the mujadheen in Afghanistan.
Then we waffled on Saddam, and he became evil personified, a creature
to be dragged from a spider hole.

In Africa, rival tribes have tried to eliminate each other regularly.
Right now in Darfur, some 500,000 people have died as one group of
Muslims tries to wipe out another, and 2.5 million refugees face
unbelievable hardships.

What is this penchant that human beings have for deciding that some
must die and some may live? How do people decide who to kill and who
to keep, who is bad and who is good, who is dispensable and who is
essential? Hitler had little difficulty deciding who to keep and who
to kill. His vision of an Aryan world was clear and unyielding.

In Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites are also quite clear on who should be
eliminated, and they are going at it, trapping our soldiers in their
crossfire of historic hatred. If more people at the top of things in
Washington, D.C., were serious students of history, they would have
known about the centuries of tribal conflict on that piece of real
estate before they decided we could turn it into paradise. Our
version of paradise, of course, a place where oil flowed freely in
our direction.

That vision has disappeared in a reality where we daily sacrifice the
lives and limbs of our troops in an internecine battle.

In schools, we teach mediation, negotiation, the need to talk.

But violence erupts, over and over, and the targets are chosen. It
seems to be innate — on every school playground, when a fist fight
begins, the kids circle and pick sides.

How do they decide? Do they back the underdog or cheer the bully, the
one who started it or the one who defended himself? When they grow
up, will they figure the way to settle a problem is to gun down as
many people as possible, if they’re wearing the "wrong" uniform, have
the "wrong" color faces, pray to the "wrong" god?

During World War II, our mother wouldn’t let us sing one of the
popular songs of the day, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."
Without being complicated about it, she could not put God and killing
in one space.

And today, while so many triggers are being pulled, so many bombs
exploded, we go to Stop & Shop to get a box of linguine, buy 39-cent
stamps at the post office, and have a second cup of coffee over
Peanuts and Dilbert.

Do we care enough to protest the very worst?