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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Building a War Machine on the Backs of Victims
Wednesday 10 December @ 13:20:41 |
 by Lydia Howell
“We all realize that there are bad people out there and that we have to do something about the real problem of terrorism. But, we don’t want to do that on the backs of other innocent people’s mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and children around the world,” strongly states David Potorti, a co-founder of the anti-war group 9/11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrows.
“Not because we’re naive dreamers, but because we realized from a practical, pragmatic point of view that [Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’] was NOT the way to solve the problem. That only creates more hatred, more terrorism, more anger turned back on us.”
David Potorti, author of “September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows”
Members of this national group all lost loved ones on September 11. More than two years later, Potorti, his voice catching, describes watching TV coverage of the WTC attacks “knowing my brother worked on the 95th floor, knowing the building was 110 stories. Counting with my eyes to see where that big gaping hole was—at the 95th floor ... that’s where my brother would have been sitting.”
On September 14, 2001, George W. Bush’s speech at the National Cathedral vowed retaliation on behalf of the attacks’ victims, referring by name to Manhattan widow Rita Lasar’s younger brother Abe Zelmanowitz. Her brother could have easily saved himself (he worked on the 27th floor), but chose to wait for rescue workers with a wheelchair-bound co-worker. In his new book, Potorti quotes Lasar’s horror at the “use [of] my brother’s heroism as justification to kill innocent people in a place far away.” She wrote to the New York Times expressing this strong reaction, shared by Potorti and others, initiating Peaceful Tomorrows’ formation. There’s no “recruitment” for the group, but after any media attention more family members join.
Potorti’s book “9/11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrows: Turning Our Grief Into Action For Peace” is an eloquent elegy for lost loved ones channeled into a transformative testimony opposing war. In my view, the Bush Administration immediately exploited the attacks for a pre-9/11 neo-conservative agenda, and I felt I had to shove my sadness aside to organize resistance.
This book made mourning possible—linking 9/11 victims and people of Afghanistan and Iraq. But the real power of the book is its vindication of our capacity to draw on compassion rather than retaliation. Over and over these stories brought me to tears of both sorrow and shimmering hope.
During visits to Afghanistan and Iraq, Peaceful Tomorrows members made leaps across language and culture, discovering humanity’s common ground in the basic experiences of love and loss. The empathetic connections that resulted are inspiring triumphs standing in stark contrast to the militarized nationalism propagated daily by the Bush Administration. An antidote to despair, this book also energizes hope as it chronicles real alternatives to retaliation being put into practice by these everyday people. Although Bush refers to September 11 in almost every speech he makes, he’s refused to meet with this anti-war group.
“In September 2002, we had a press conference with [Ohio] Rep. Dennis Kucinich (The only Democratic presidential candidate that voted against invading Iraq). He introduced us and stepped aside—this was just before the vote on the Iraq war resolution in Congress,” Potorti says. They received a letter from Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. “It was a pro forma letter, saying ‘The President is working closely with the U.N., doing whatever he can to avoid war with Saddam Hussein.’ Pretty cynical and really not truthful—but it was acknowledgment [of Peaceful Tomorrows]. She still didn’t address our concern— which was, STOP using our family members for war!” They continued to ask to meet with Bush, hoping recently to go to the Crawford Ranch during a presidential vacation. Potorti says, “The denial-letter came, saying ‘The president is too busy—but, thank you for the support your letter represents!’— that’s the line I remember!”
In his book, Peaceful Tomorrows, Potorti describes the investigation of the attacks. A group of September 11 widows calling themselves the Jersey Girls and other organizations, pressed for the independent commission currently investigating the attacks far more broadly (co-chaired by Tom Cain and Lee Hamilton). The previous Congressional committee only considered intelligence before the attacks, reported in December 2002. The White House withheld those findings, until this July and by then 28 pages about Saudi Arabia had been deleted.
David Potorti, author of “September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows”
“There would not be [current, broad] investigation without this small group going to Washington and demanding it. The president has so much power he can hide anything, anything politically embarrassing to him through executive privilege,” Potorti says.
Peaceful Tomorrows is insisting Bush have limited “executive privilege” and forcing him to release the next report after 30 days. He refers to leaks to the media that ‘outed’ a CIA officer married to diplomat Joe Wilson, who publicly challenged assertions that Iraq bought nuclear material from Niger. Potorti scoffed at Bush denials that Administration officials were not responsible: “It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing—this is an open government thing! It’s about what we’re willing to accept as citizens in a democracy. We spent $100 million on Whitewater [Clinton’s pre-presidential financial scandal]. Only $3 million has been spent on investigating September 11! It’s not about ‘getting Bush’—I’m no fan of Bill Clinton either! In a democracy it’s always about us—and what we’re willing to let people get away with.”
“Why no response to the attacks for two hours? Terrorists ruled the skies for two hours and no jets were scrambled from nearby bases. Not a slow response.
Why no response?
Not a poor response. No response. No jets were scrambled until all the attacks were over,” Potorti’s measured voice crackled with sudden anger. He explains that this is a total failure of standard operating procedures when any plane goes off-course, because of hijacking or other reasons. NORAD—the federal agency controlling the skies—is required to send jets up within five minutes. Potorti cites the plane crash with golfer Payne Stewart, where military jets responded as required. “How is it possible multiple planes are hijacked, and within 30 minutes, there’s no military escort? Forty-five minutes after leaving Boston, the WTC was hit. Why didn’t George Bush get up from reading to children when told of the attacks? Why did Richard Meyers, chair of the Joint Chiefs, spend 40 minutes drinking coffee after the WTC—until the Pentagon was hit? Bush and Cheney called Tom Daschle (House Majority Leader) and said ‘we don’t want this investigated.’ So, Congress only looked at intelligence before the attacks.”
The new, independent commission will release its findings next May.
Potorti’s book is a kind of literary quilt, stitching together the history of Peaceful Tomorrows, rooted in personal stories, poems, short essays and other writings by members. Chapters begin with beautiful quotes aspiring to peace by Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk, instrumental in bringing American veterans and Vietnamese people together to heal from that war), Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s “Prayer for America,” Sen. Paul Wellstone and others. Moving black and white photographs also document Peaceful Tomorrows’ members in Iraq and Afghanistan meeting with people Portorti calls “our counterparts”—civilians who’ve lost loved ones to military violence unleashed by the U.S. Peaceful Tomorrows members joined the post-9/11 anti-war movement from October 2001 to opposing the invasion of Iraq. Voices in the Wilderness and its Nobel Prize nominee Kathy Kelly, who has opposed U.S. sanctions and bombing of Iraq since 1995, linked up with Peaceful Tomorrows early; Global Exchange, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Fellowship of Reconciliation and other peace groups followed. Michael Moore donated proceeds from the New York City premier of “Bowling For Columbine” to Peaceful Tomorrows.
Like Bush’s refusal to meet with Peaceful Tomorrows, corporate-owned media usually fail to report their activities. Potorti observes that the international press shows regular interest, citing the irony of Japanese TV covering a New York City press conference that the Times ignored. That coverage inspired a delegation of Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors to contact Peaceful Tomorrows. When the Japanese delegation toured the United States, calling for nuclear disarmament, they wanted to go to the WTC site with Peaceful Tomorrows. Potorti describes that pilgrimage and how the now-elderly survivors noted the strange similarities between the destruction in New York and their memories of 1945 Japan. He relates one atomic bomb survivor’s story.
“This man lost his whole family. He had to go live with another family, in a small house, with the other children resenting him. He felt totally unwanted. This man hated the U.S. for years,” Potorti’s voice trembles painfully. “You hear that kind of story 60 years after the fact and you have to ask, what kind of stories are we creating in Iraq and Afghanistan? Lost parents. People watching their children die horrible deaths, sliced in half by cluster bombs [made by Edina, Minnesota company Alliant Technologies—writer’s note.] What kind of nightmares are we creating 10 years from now? 20 years from now? 30 years from now? This stuff doesn’t just end!”
His voice sharpens incredulously. “I always remember this headline, three days after the fall of Baghdad—April 2003: ‘Iraq Returning To Normal.’ The notion that we could drop 14,000 bombs and that country would return to normal three days later—this is the level of denial our country is in. That’s a removal from reality that STILL exists. I would have thought September 11th would have been enough of a wake-up call to get us thinking about what life is like in the rest of the world.”
Potorti’s book is full of powerful stories of 9/11 family-members reaching out to the rest of the world.
Rita Lasar and an Afghani woman embrace and weep together over the brothers they both lost. Derrill Bodley, a music teacher, shared songs for his daughter, Deora, a victim of 9/11, with students at an Afghanistan girls’ school. Colleen Kelly’s brother Bill died “randomly” (He was only at the WTC for an appointment). She describes a family gathering in Basra, Iraq, where “we sang, we cried, we attempted to tell stories about our lost loved ones. There was a palpable human connection that transcended all boundaries of national identity, culture or religion.”
Potorti’s book has inspired endorsements from famous dissidents: Vietnam veteran/peace activist Ron Kovic (immortalized by Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone’s film “Born On The 4th Of July”) called it “Voices of great courage, healing and wisdom”; Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the lone vote against war on Afghanistan, said it “truly honored the memories of their loved ones by exploring ways to promote peace, rather than advance war”; Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) concluded that “no one can speak with a more powerful voice or with more authority on the need for peace and justice than Peaceful Tomorrows.” Much has been written about September 11 from many perspectives, but coming to terms with it feels impossible without this book’s redemptive vision.
North Carolina-based writer Portorti acknowledges that not everyone who lost someone on September 11 feels as his group does. Describing one widow “with her husband’s name painted on a bomb dropped on Afghanistan, thrilled that we were going to drop it on the people who did this. It probably landed on somebody’s house and killed somebody elses’ husband!” Each chapter closes with e-mail responses to Peaceful Tomorrows—some supportive, some not.
Peaceful Tomorrows has even taken on the most tangled conflict in the Middle East, meeting with a group called Israeli/Palestinian Bereaved Families For Peace. That group created one of the most amazing actions for peace: A United Nations vigil with over 1,000 coffins, draped in Israeli and Palestinian flags, each representing those killed on both sides. It was ignored by American media.
“Itzak Frankenthal’s oldest son was killed by Hamas nine years ago. He cautioned us about using the word ‘justice’ because for a lot of people war is justice—like that woman with her husband’s name on the bomb. But, he’s committed to break the cycle of violence.” Potorti could be describing Peaceful Tomorrows’ mission. “Itzak said ‘I’m not going to cause the deaths of any more people’s children.’ He said his ‘revenge’ is peace. That’s his way of bombing people—with love.”
“9/11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrows:Turning Our Grief Into Action For Peace.” $15 (May Day and Arise! Bookstores). More information: http://www.peacefultomorrows.org. Hear a conversation with David Potorti, Tues., Dec. 23, 9 a.m.-11:30 a.m. as part of the holiday special “Making Peace on Earth,” produced/hosted by Lydia Howell, broadcast on KFAI, 90.3FM Minneapolis 106.7FM St. Paul. Archived http://www.kfai.org.
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