We are not alone in our mourning over losses from acts of terrorism and acts of war.

America is also not innocent of having caused suffering to others. In some cases, America contributed directly, in other cases indirectly to such losses.

Office No More Victims Project September 11, 2002
A WORLDLY PRAYER

Take ONE minute of silence to remember nearly 4,000 Americans murdered by terrorists on September 11th.

But to our neighbors from Chile, Tuesday, Sept 11, marks another act of terror, one in which 10,000 innocents died, as Pinochet led the first bloody coup in that countrys history in 1983. Hold another minute in silence for them.

While we are silent, remembering the dead in New York and Chile, perhaps we should observe SIX additional minutes in memory of 30,000 Argentines, disappeared by the junta during the Dirty War in the 80s.

Another TWENTY minutes for the 100,000 Japanese civilians who died as a direct or indirect result of the atomic bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

An additional THIRTY minutes for the 150,000 Russians and Afganis dead at the hands of the Taliban.

FORTY minutes more for the 200,000 Iranians killed by the Iraqis with money and arms provided to Saddam Hussain by his allies.

SIXTY more minutes to remember 300,000 Guatamalans, assassinated by their government during a terror that lasted thirty years.

And yet another ONE HUNDRED minutes for the 500,000 children who hve died as a result of the economic war on Iraq.

If we had done this, we would have spent more than four hours in silence.

ONE MINUTE for our American victims and FOUR HOURS 17 MINUTES for our other brothers and sisters.

Should this silence still not be sufficient reminder, then perhaps you might add SIX MORE HOURS for the 800,000 dead in Rwanda and 1 million dead in the Viet Nam war.

The dead in other lands should bring us as much pain as our own. Let us pray that peace descend to a wounded humanity.

Let those of us here give ourselves to the search for justice. If we do not, the entire world may be plunged into a moment of silence that has no end.

This appeared in a spring 2002 newsletter of the San Antonio PeaceCenter.
PEACE RESPONSE American Friends Service Committee Northeast Ohio

We slide into indifference over disasters that happen one person at a time.

For each person in her or his own disaster, and for their families, this is their personal 9-11.

We have become calloused to deaths by auto accidents, which kill close to 50,000 people in the US and 700,000 in the whole world annually.

We hardly give notice the 100,000 deaths in the US annually from side effects of medications properly prescribed, or the tens of thousands from infections in hospitals, unnecessary surgery and medical errors.

Starfield, B. Is US health really the best in the world? JAMA 2000, 284(4), 483-485

These, too, deserve our healing attention.

9-11 has made us more sensitive to assaults on our health and wellbeing. Hopefully these lessons will serve us as well in broader areas of our lives.

                           
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