Contemplating Hard Questions
I have been asked a few times in the last week about my thoughts and feelings around the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan. Since I graduated from the University of Montana, questions like this have become fairly common when people learn that one of my degrees is in Central & Southwest Asian Studies. My passion for and desire to better understand this region directly resulted from the same emotion I feel now, anger.
I still vividly remember the response from a woman I was volunteering with in high school when I explained that I wanted to learn Arabic or Persian in college. “Why on earth would you want to better understand those people? They hate us and will always hate us, so there is no point in trying to understand them.” I had so much passionate anger, so many questions, and very little information on that summer day in 2008.
I have spent the last 13 years letting that anger act as fuel for education in an attempt to answer and process the questions her comment prompted. I sincerely hope that her appallingly simplistic, narrow, and misinformed attitude led others to seek, not only information, but also greater personal and political understanding for themselves as well.
Today feels a lot like that day back in 2008. An abundance of that same frustration and sadness has prompted a whole new set of questions that I invite you to contemplate with me.
How do we prevent humanitarian disasters when we can see them coming?
How do we prevent these disasters from becoming multi-generational?
As citizens of the United States, in what ways are we complicit in our government’s global actions?
How can we become a part of the solution for holding our government accountable when its actions cause harm?
Who is in the room when decisions get made?
What voices are not being heard that deserve a platform?
Who benefits from conditions as they are? Who suffers?
What can the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center do?
What can I do?
I encourage you all to take some time to contemplate hard questions. JRPC remains committed to peace and is a safe site of powerful communication. If you’d like to talk about any current events or how they inform our mission, we invite you to reach out or come in.
Autor: Carol Schwartz | Fair Trade & Marketing Director, JRPC