In "Anger Burns on the Fringe of Britain's Muslims," Hassan Fattah, apparently just off Iraq duty, interviews some young-ish Muslims in Leeds, England about why their buddy Shehzad Tanweer switched careers to become a human subway bomb:
"He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. [Sanjay] Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?"
Mr. Dutt has a point. In the U.S. there's rarely a moment of silence for anything, especially on allegedly somber occasions like Memorial Day or Veterans' Day when the big message on TV is to
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It would make a big impression around the world if the entire U.S. ground to a halt for two minutes to remember not just our servicemen and -women, but the tens of thousands who've been casualties of combat in the past four years—Afghans and Iraqis of every stripe, Pakistanis, Brits, Japanese, Egypt's late ambassador to Iraq, and all those Turkish truckers who get kidnapped and killed in Iraq with hardly anyone noticing.
Stop trading on the exchanges, turn the intersections into four-way red lights where that's possible, toll the church bells, everybody stand at the desk or on the shoulder of the road, President Bush standing head bowed outside the White House. For two slender minutes.
The last time I remember anything similar was 9/11/02, when bells tolled and heads bowed just before 9:00 a.m. Eastern time to mark the first plane's impact a year earlier. It was so early in the day that most Americans were still in bed, and its message was, "This was the moment somebody hit us."
It may be time to remember everyone who's not us, and do it with the sun high overhead. Two or three o'clock Eastern should ensure that everyone in the U.S. is awake and paying attention.
Two minutes of silence for the dead should have wide appeal, regardless of someone's position on the Iraq war, the ongoing Afghan campaign or even the "war on terror." Even the lunatic fringes will like it: Nuke-the-towelheads types can stand rigidly for the troops while Noam Chomsky drawing-breath-makes-you-an-imperialists can clam up for all those victims of white aggression.
Readers may remember the powerful photos of candlelight vigils overseas that appeared after 9/11: in Germany, Britain, China, even Tehran, people spontaneously flooded the streets to remember U.S. losses. It may be time for the U.S. to return the favor, particularly as regards the Muslim world. So perhaps some brave legislator could help the U.S.'s image abroad by picking a non-9/11, non-holiday day to shut the country down.
For just two minutes.
(I should note that, while researching London's two minutes of silence last week, I came across this item about the same sort of idea on adbusters.org.—PK)
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