electric mist

when angels cry

One time when I was in high school -- I think maybe I was in the tenth grade -- my brother went missing for an entire afternoon. I had just gotten my license (the legal age for that was 15 at the time) and I was responsible for driving us back and forth to school, but I couldn't find him. He was supposed to have met me at the car after the bell, and when he didn't show up, I went looking for him. Our small school backed up to a lot of rural farmland, and once I had gone past the baseball field without any sign, I went back into the school and called my mom. He was two years younger than me and a pretty small kid who was trying to play football -- a good kid who wanted to please, and he really wouldn't have just wandered off. A few hours later, my dad found him unconscious; he'd been beaten and left in a ravine a few acres behind our school. His eyes were swollen shut and he was heavily bruised, but there were thankfully no broken bones or severe injuries and he recovered quickly from the physical wounds. My world flipped upside down in that moment, because I realized how fragile he was, how fragile our family was, and we could have lost him. I had held my breath while looking for him, and sometimes, when I remember that moment, I find myself still holding it. There is a sense of shock and horror that scars so deeply, it never really goes away.

He wouldn't tattle on who the culprits were -- maybe it was a misplaced machismo, or maybe he suspected he would get more of the same from friends of the bullies, I'm not sure. I do know that I figured out who the culprits were and I'm sure my parents had to have known, but I'm not certain what -- if anything -- was done.

Nearly twenty-five years later, I can still remember the fear of having lost him and the outrage at the bullies who did that to him. I remember the feeling of helplessness and frustration and of wanting to find a way to lash back at the bullies, at wanting to find a way for them to understand that they didn't just hurt him, they hurt an entire family. It lasted for years beyond the bruises and welps. In fact, it formed who he became, because he didn't want to be a victim; he began taking karate and then, once he was a blackbelt, he started teaching through the local park system. He grew into an amazing man whose students love him, who went on to win the International competition in sparring (in Panama), whose philosophy with his students is to teach them to be strong and know how to defend themselves, to never be the victim, but he also stresses that they never be the bully, either. He's done more to change lives for the positive instead of letting that day in the ravine define him for the negative.

But the bullies, I will always remember. I will always feel a certain amount of loathing for them and for their families who had to have seen what they were becoming and did nothing to change it or stop it. Had they bothered to apologize, I doubt I would have felt it erased what they had done. I abhor cruelty. I don't understand it, I don't think it's funny (when it's done in prat-fall types of reality shows), and I don't ever want to be associated with it.

And now, we are the bullies. There have been many blog entries about Abu Ghraib and the torture, and many more about how there is no honor, and most are far more profound than I can manage to be. What I think about -- beyond the shame of our nation -- are the families of the people in those videos... both the victims' families and the bullies. For every one of the bullies, there is a mom somewhere whose face is buried in shame, who had been proud to say that their son or daughter served their country with honor. For every soldier who created the humiliation, there are countless others who served with them honorably, whose names are now associated with atrocious crimes. There are people who are fathers, mothers themselves who are serving, and one of the few things they had to hold onto in this protracted "effort" in Iraq was that they, at least, were serving honorably, and all of that is trashed. For every one of those people tortured, there are wives or sons or daughters, mothers, fathers, cousins, friends who will not forget. Who will never forget. If I can remember after 25 years the fury in my heart at that moment of finding my brother, how can we expect a simple, "oops, no one was watching, sorry" attitude to calm the fury overseas?

I think some of those bullies went on to do decent things with their lives. One of them married and later became a deacon at a little church. Years later, I was invited to a program at that church and I didn't know the guy was a deacon there; I remember that even though I was an adult by that point, even though he had changed, even though there had been worlds of good done... I walked in and suddenly felt myself freeze at the sight of him and the memory of him as a bully overlaid everything else he had become. I saw him through his worst actions. That is how the world will see us. It does not matter how much -- if any -- good may have been done in Iraq. We don't get a "get out of jail free" pass just because we did a few good things. We can't justify being a little evil if we've also done good. We can't point fingers at a dictator who's done evil things and then turn around and do those same sorts of things and expect anyone not label us evil.

When we have a political and military hierarchy who spends the time since discovery passing the buck, trying to find a way to dilute the blame, trying to spin, we have lost any moral center we may have had as a country. When there is no one who says, "I should have led them well, and I did not," the center is rotten and it cannot hold. And the world will never forget.

I never knew there would be a time I would be ashamed to be an American, but I am. I am sorry for the things that were done in our name. I am sorry for the military who are truly good and who did good things, because they have been harmed for the rest of their lives. I wish I knew how to change these things today. The world will never forget. And niether will I.

Posted by toni at May 11, 2004 11:30 AM