It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can’t do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies’ children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (2003-02-09), “A Citizen’s Response,” sec. 4, Citizenship Papers (2003)
(Source)
The essay, including this passage, was also published in a longer form in Orion Magazine (2003-03/04), and collected in his Citizenship Papers (2003).
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innocents
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The National Security Strategy defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents” (p. 5). This is truly a distinct kind of violence, but to imply by the word “terrorism” that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of “terrorists” is misleading. The “legitimate” warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in “terrorism,” and the willingness to do so, as in “war,” is not a source of comfort.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (2003-02-09), “A Citizen’s Response,” sec. 1, paid advertisment, New York Times
(Source)
The essay, including this passage, was also published in a longer form in Orion Magazine (2003-03/04), and collected in his Citizenship Papers (2003). In the latter, the second sentence is extended:This is truly a distinct kind of violence, but it is a kind old and familiar, even in the United States. All that was really new about the events of September 11, 2001, was that they raised the scale of such violence to that of "legitimate" modern warfare. To imply ...