We should all be afghans, but we are murderous squizoids

20 august

Being 52 already, I have lived through few historical moments. A poignant one was when, visiting the gorges du Verdon (a turistical spot in France) all phones starting ringing and everybody was saying aloud “what? two planes? in the World Trade Center?”. The next morning I bought Le Monde, and the headline just hit what we all were thinking: “we are all Americans now” 

So now you know what I mean with the title. The government of the USA and quite some others, have made a mess of Afghanistan for a long two decades, and then they quit. Just another empire buried, one could say. And we all, right now, should be afghans. But we aren’t. 

We are nothing like that. We are murderous esquizoids. 

Solidarity is a powerful thing. And international solidarity is the stuff of legend, the thing that has made us greater than the band of killing apes we stem from. If you are south american, you will have quite a few ancestors that escaped the misery and the famines of Europe, to start anew across the sea. And start anew they did, forming nations, creating the future that is you. If you are North American, even the whole deranged nightmare of Trump and all what created it can’t erase the powerful sign of the statue of liberty “A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame/ is the imprisoned lightning, and her name/ Mother of Exiles”. And if you are european, or asian, you know in your bones that the land you live in is a crossroad, a place where more people that we ever remember has passed through, and also settled in. 

To add to this knowledge of us all, just take any newspaper today and cry with me. Cry at the tragedy that unfolds in Afghanistan. Cry of pain, of anger, or both. Actually, join the chorus. Because nowadays pretty much every other writer and reporter is lamenting the downward spiral of Afghanistan retaken by the Taliban. You would expect then that at any moment now somebody will start the ashtag #weareallafghans and we will start collecting money to pay the planes, and to gather resources to receive the ones that are going away from their country and trying to arrive to ours. You would expect so, but of course you know better. 

Because we are all squizoids. Because at the same moment that we cry for the women and the children of Afghanistan, we want to keep them far away. Because nobody is asking for an airbridge, but we all are asking for more control on those potential refugees. So that they can be stopped and send them back at any doubt of misbehavior, of potential trouble for us. 

So fearing them we have become loathsome, loathsome murderers. We send our troops, and then we send our drones, and we killed them. We killed them for twenty years. And we lost the war, and we don’t even want to receive our allies.  

I would like to have a last line, and I don’t. So to our shame, I think I will just copy the whole thing. So that we remember what have we been capable of, and what are we shamefully incapable off, now. 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Shame on us.