2006-12-18 - 11:11 a.m.
The "president" of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently hosted a conference where he had very high-profile deniers/questioners of the Jewish Holocaust of WWII speak about different aspects of that event and it received international attention, grabbing headlines around the world. Depending on which headlines one read, there was a wide spectrum of feeling and reaction to this conference.
Now, having lived in the United States for most of my life, I am a true believer in the freedom of speech. Just as the Danish newspapers had the freedom to caricaturize the Islamic prophet Mohammad with a bomb for a turban, so does the president of Iran have the freedom to have these deniers have the right to have them express their opinions. However, I have also lived in the United States where there are lots of other freedoms, relative peace and open minded thoughts on the state of the world. My thoughts revolve around peace, compassion, love, harmony and pacifism. I believe that war only begets more war. Every time we take up arms, whether to defend ourselves or to attack someone, we are engendering hatred against ourselves. By "ourselves" I mean every single human being on earth. I do not advocate peace as a one-sided proposition. I advocate peace as though it were the rule for every single one of us. I advocate peace as though our combined human moral compass, and hence the human directive for survival, were dependent on it.
With that said, Mr. Ahmadinejad and every other person who has ever questioned the evilness and vileness of the death of a human being at the hands of another, should be ashamed of themselves. War, and every single death caused by any war, is WRONG. Even if ONE Jew had died in a concentration camp, it deserves to be splashed across headlines in world newspapers, causing outrage. Even if ONE woman dies at the hands of her husband due to abuse, it deserves headline news and outrage. Even if one man dies, forgotten, in a prison for "moral indecency", it deserves headline news and outrage. Even if one man is put to death in a state-run death row chamber for ANY CRIME, it deserves headline news and outrage. Even if one child dies at the hands of a warlord guerilla who expected more gold from the child that day, it deserves headline news and outrage. Even if one woman dies, buried to her bodice in the ground and killed with rocks for "lewd acts with a man, not her husband", it deserves healine news and outrage.
All of this, and every other imponderable death that occurs EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY in our world, people killing people, man woman and child dying, without a trace of reprieve, without a wasted thought by those with the voice and the power to stop it; every single one of them, deserve headline news and books written about them, philosophers telling their stories, countries of their own, a planet of their own, where they can live their just-deserved afterlives in peace. Where they can drill the unadulterated moral truth into the heads of their murders. Where they can pave the path for the world to find its salvation. Where we can find ourselves, and ask ourselves for forgiveness.
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