Sunday, September 10, 2006
Cariño: 9-11
By Linda Grace Cariño
Paradigm Shift
I REMEMBER watching the horrific destruction of the New York twin towers live on that cable news channel. It happened while Pia Hontiveros was hosting Strictly Politics, and I wondered then: why doesn't this woman get to what's showing on the half screen, obviously a breaking news item, airplanes crashing into the NY twin towers? She did, eventually. And tomorrow marks the fifth year since it happened.
Recently watching the Spielberg hit Munich reminded me that the terror wars, of which 9-11 was a part, are far from being new. Munich chronicles the massacre of the Israeli team that went to the 1972 Munich Olympics and how Israel retaliates, by creating a team to hunt down and kill the perpetrators of the massacre. This all happens unofficially: the team does not exist, they have no identities, the funds that they are given to work with do not exist, their orders are nonexistent.
The nonexistent team is led by a Mossad agent played by Eric Bana and is told mainly from his point of view. He does succeed in leading said team to success -- eight or nine of the 11 perpetrators are located and killed. Of his team of five, only himself and one other survive, if I remember right. The others become victims themselves of the terror war, located, hunted down, and killed in the same way they locate, hunt down, and kill. Watching, one wonders, when does this stop?
It is a question the Bana character himself asks, putting words to the theme of the movie, giving voice, too, to what the rest of the world is thinking: when does it stop? My mother puts it succinctly: "Ang gulo ng mga Arabo," calling all Middle East players in the terror war, correctly, geographically, Arabian.
Myself, I tend to a karmic take on Munich, 9-11, the resulting American war on Iraq, terrorism. These players seem to be caught in a karmic spiral. If one lives by the gun, one dies by the gun, as the saying goes. Then is born on the opposite side, to learn how it is to be on the receiving end of all s/he him/herself caused the last life around. Then back to the other side, to make retribution for the retribution, and on, and on, and on, and on.
It takes a paradigm shift to take on such a view, a more major one to say stop, the moment we pray to happen fast. Because even after the "stop light," there will be a lot of work to do.
(September 10, 2006 issue)
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