"Susan C. Strong" <sstrong@igc.org>
Dear Friends of The Metaphor Project,
The letter to the editor included below (already sent to the
S.F. Chronicle)
represents the most concise and complete version of the message
I believe we
must get out to every member of Congress, every media outlet,
and every
opinion maker as quickly as possible. I have already contacted
all my own
Congressional representatives with most of it (it has been evolving
this
morning). Please use your own contact lists and forward this message
as
widely as possible, write versions of it to your own local newspapers,
and
do whatever else you can to create a buzz.
The key part of it, I believe, is the issue of U.S. moral integrity.
It is
well known that cognitive dissonance, the sense of being in conflict
with
oneself over value or meaning concepts is one of the most powerful
change
agents there is. If George Lakoff is right about American politics
and I
think he is, morality is the center of gravity in our political
rhetoric.
Please do not fail to include the moral integrity point in your
own versions
of this message and the reference to McVeigh and collateral damage;
otherwise it will be too abstract.
If you would like to read an excellent and detailed argument
for why calling
the attack a crime is best, look at Michael Klare's piece entitled
How to
Defeat bin Laden at www.salon.com, dated
9/13/01. Klare does not use the moral
integrity/McVeigh references, but he includes brilliant ideas
about how the
crime definition can strengthen our ties to mainstream Islam worldwide
and
increase American understanding of the suffering of others abroad.
I feel very strongly that this terrible moment in our history
as a country
offers us an unprecedented opportunity for growth and moral evolution,
if we
can fully confront the moral gulf between responding to these
bombings as
crime or as so-called acts of war. . .
In hope,
Susan C. Strong
The Metaphor Project
www.metaphorproject.org
Dear Editor,
It is vital to our moral integrity as a nation that we immediately
stop
calling the bombings of New York and Washington acts of war. These
attacks
were crimes against humanity perpetrated by an international network
of mass
murderers. They demand that justice be done. To react by calling
for war
brings us down to the same level as our attackers, because modern
war
involves the massive and systematic killing of innocents. The
military's
language for this, collateral damage, is exactly how terrorist
Timothy
McVeigh dismissed the deaths of his innocent victims. Our country
and our
leaders must rise above this level now, before it is too late.
Susan C. Strong
8 La Madronal
Orinda, CA 94563