Written: 14 July 2012
This morning over a Werther’s Original, some fruit, stale bread and stale-strange instant coffee, I cried. Tears streaming down my face, I ran to get my laptop and purge some of what had been boiling under the surface. Outward emotion does not come easily to me – aside from passionate discourse and obvious argumentativeness – but since I began this journey into the world I have found the core of my emotion.
My father and I discussed this one in great length before I left. Mutually assured destruction, assuring that destruction could be rendered and is therefore completely unnecessary. That seems like such a harmless and peaceful means of waging war. Whoever thought of such a thing must be so unimaginably proud of the fruits of his labor. But what of the fallout? Millions unable to feed themselves due to the “necessary” cost of that armament. Whole populations exposed for generations to the toxicity required for the manufacture of war. Perhaps it is not wholesale slaughter, but is slow and silent death really any better than quick and heroic sacrifices paraded through war?
I do not mean to in any way make a case for future policy or hot war vs. cold war. They are both deplorable manifestations of a very dark evil that lives and sometimes thrives within the human psyche. I wish only to mourn the affects of such a hideous side of us that we often pretend does not exist.
I will admit that I am at times fixated upon or fascinated with the worst of our actions. In undergrad I studied conservative politics of Central Europe, mostly focusing on WWII, visiting concentration camps and I wrote my thesis on xenophobia in right wing politics, with a particular focus on a politician named Jorg Haider, then quite popular in Austria. It was both interesting, marginally comical, and appalling that someone with the same populist appeal as Hitler, stemming from the same region, with similar outspoken xenophobia could gain such traction.
In 2007, after having lived in Turkmenistan for about 9 months, I took a vacation and ended up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My friend Emily and I went to S-21 and the killing fields. A piece of history. Although S-21 was no more graphic than Dachau or Mauthausen, I was different. I was so overwhelmed by the reality of what had happened in that school and what human beings had done to one another – and in fact continue to do to one another – that I had to leave. I had to stand outside and practice breathing as though I had forgotten how, and focus desperately trying not to be sick. A bullet is more valuable than a life. It is acceptable to bludgeon another human being to death with a tire iron, in order to preserve a little gun powder and metal. I forced myself to make it to the end. I will never recover from that experience and others like it, but perhaps that is a necessary evil. The stories of hate, torture and destruction are no longer just ghost stories and tales of the Brothers Grimm. They are real, and to be guarded against at all costs.
That is why, although I am afraid, although it breaks my heart and makes me want to never leave my apartment, I venture out into the world. Perhaps I cannot stop the next genocide, but maybe I can be a voice raised to rally against it. Perhaps I can be the one to open my doors to Anne Franke, or help a lost child across a boarder. Perhaps I cannot cleanup an abandoned mine, but I can draw some attention to that pile of poison decimating a town that human beings call home.
* For those who are concerned, I have researched this
article thoroughly. There are not any
facts herein that could not otherwise be learned via a simple search of the
internet. I have and continue to protect
information that is considered to be confidential and/or classified.
A few of my resources:
http://news.tj/en/news/taboshar-residents-fence-tailing-dump
http://journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir/Science2005/307(5707).pdf
http://www.rferl.org/content/Tajikistans_Former_Soviet_Nuclear_Sites_Pose_Threat_To_Nearby_Villages/1604737.html
http://journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir/Science2005/307(5707).pdf
This morning over a Werther’s Original, some fruit, stale bread and stale-strange instant coffee, I cried. Tears streaming down my face, I ran to get my laptop and purge some of what had been boiling under the surface. Outward emotion does not come easily to me – aside from passionate discourse and obvious argumentativeness – but since I began this journey into the world I have found the core of my emotion.
This morning it is pain, suffering and the insurmountability
of the harm that we, as a human race, cause.
A pile, so high that it might be mistaken for a natural mountain, of uranium mining waste. Standing atop the mass, taking measurements; it was exhilarating, and anxiety producing to realize that I was standing on a substance emitting between 0.140 and 0.240 microroentgen per hour. This number alone didn’t mean much to me either until I was told that 0.020 is about the normal level.
A pile, so high that it might be mistaken for a natural mountain, of uranium mining waste. Standing atop the mass, taking measurements; it was exhilarating, and anxiety producing to realize that I was standing on a substance emitting between 0.140 and 0.240 microroentgen per hour. This number alone didn’t mean much to me either until I was told that 0.020 is about the normal level.
Courtesy of OSCE and http://nuclear-news.net/information/wastes/
Children play on this mound. When it rains the water washes
away vast sections and carries the radioactivity like silt into the neighboring
town. Children are sick. People die, and I cry with such great heaves
and sobs that I can no longer type, because I think the words “and for what?” Mutually assured destruction.
My father and I discussed this one in great length before I left. Mutually assured destruction, assuring that destruction could be rendered and is therefore completely unnecessary. That seems like such a harmless and peaceful means of waging war. Whoever thought of such a thing must be so unimaginably proud of the fruits of his labor. But what of the fallout? Millions unable to feed themselves due to the “necessary” cost of that armament. Whole populations exposed for generations to the toxicity required for the manufacture of war. Perhaps it is not wholesale slaughter, but is slow and silent death really any better than quick and heroic sacrifices paraded through war?
I do not mean to in any way make a case for future policy or hot war vs. cold war. They are both deplorable manifestations of a very dark evil that lives and sometimes thrives within the human psyche. I wish only to mourn the affects of such a hideous side of us that we often pretend does not exist.
I will admit that I am at times fixated upon or fascinated with the worst of our actions. In undergrad I studied conservative politics of Central Europe, mostly focusing on WWII, visiting concentration camps and I wrote my thesis on xenophobia in right wing politics, with a particular focus on a politician named Jorg Haider, then quite popular in Austria. It was both interesting, marginally comical, and appalling that someone with the same populist appeal as Hitler, stemming from the same region, with similar outspoken xenophobia could gain such traction.
In 2007, after having lived in Turkmenistan for about 9 months, I took a vacation and ended up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My friend Emily and I went to S-21 and the killing fields. A piece of history. Although S-21 was no more graphic than Dachau or Mauthausen, I was different. I was so overwhelmed by the reality of what had happened in that school and what human beings had done to one another – and in fact continue to do to one another – that I had to leave. I had to stand outside and practice breathing as though I had forgotten how, and focus desperately trying not to be sick. A bullet is more valuable than a life. It is acceptable to bludgeon another human being to death with a tire iron, in order to preserve a little gun powder and metal. I forced myself to make it to the end. I will never recover from that experience and others like it, but perhaps that is a necessary evil. The stories of hate, torture and destruction are no longer just ghost stories and tales of the Brothers Grimm. They are real, and to be guarded against at all costs.
That is why, although I am afraid, although it breaks my heart and makes me want to never leave my apartment, I venture out into the world. Perhaps I cannot stop the next genocide, but maybe I can be a voice raised to rally against it. Perhaps I can be the one to open my doors to Anne Franke, or help a lost child across a boarder. Perhaps I cannot cleanup an abandoned mine, but I can draw some attention to that pile of poison decimating a town that human beings call home.
A few of my resources:
http://news.tj/en/news/taboshar-residents-fence-tailing-dump
http://journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir/Science2005/307(5707).pdf
http://www.rferl.org/content/Tajikistans_Former_Soviet_Nuclear_Sites_Pose_Threat_To_Nearby_Villages/1604737.html
http://journals2005.pasteur.ac.ir/Science2005/307(5707).pdf
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