Spring, Here And There

To the Editor:

It is surreal to turn on the TV at any moment, and be an instant spectator to this war. The immediacy of battlefield images, cityscapes under the blast flares and mushrooming smoke of bombardment, vignettes of fleeing populace, under fire, and desperate people crowding upon whatever “humanitarian” aid is brought within their reach, “embeds” eerily into the calm, secure, comfortable surroundings of one’s living room.

I hear the springtime morning’s chorus of birds, singing their breeding season phrases; not even a distant rumble of artillery fire…

How will we manage the future, even when we have “won” this war? Muslims worldwide are uniting in a common fury. Arab media do not make known the invaders; efforts to avoid or minimize civilian harm, where possible. Our military campaign’s examples of restraint are not mitigating factors in the Muslim mind, which seethes at the domination and humiliation we bring upon Iraq’s nationhood. And indeed, we bring destruction enough to the towns and cities, for it is unavoidable in the face of a stubborn refusal to capitulate. Why should we expect towns and cities to open their gates to us? If the forces of another country invaded us, would we not tenaciously resist?

Even those populations who have been suppressed and know the regime’s brutal cruelty, have a decade’s lesion to convince them that uprising is perilous.

What manner of temperance and peaceful political cooperation can come to this country which has known neither for more than a generation.

The malignant, festering wound between Israel and the Palestinian people seems beyond healing. Is there any way it can be cauterized, by the application of clean, fair, firm policy?

At large, able to do dreadful harm, are multiplying terrorist thousands, amply funded and supplied by various covert factions, under governments disclaiming any such support but likely “buying” temporary immunity from destablization aimed at themselves by walking a fine line between placating the implacable and repressing the dispossessed.

Here the birds sing, and budding trees anticipate their flowering…

Polly Brody

218-B Heritage Village, Southbury                               April 19, 2004