Hello Readers!
Our ASTU class has been focusing on 9/11 attacks and the trauma such events and wars cause. We are all aware of the 9/11 attacks and how it is and always will be remembered as one of the biggest traumatic event in the history. It’s not only the event that we remember but also the thousands of Americans who lost their ‘valuable’ lives in those attacks. Several Memorials have been built as a tribute to their lives, the most well-known being the National September 11 Memorial and Museum located at the World Trade Center site about which Dr. Luger discussed in the class. Marjane Satrapi quoted in Persepolis “An entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists” sums up the consequence that the majority of innocent people suffer because of the wrongdoings of few people and the 9/11 event was no exception. Along with the Americans, the 48,644 Afghan and 1,690,903 Iraqi people also paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit. They lost their lives too and suffered drastically. But their pain and loss is not given as much importance even though the trauma was equal on both the sides if not more. This makes me think about the discussion we had in class on Butler’s book. Butler in his book raised questions about how does one evaluate the value of an individual’s life and who decides their ‘value’? Why are lives of some people given more importance than that of others? It also makes me wonder that if we still have the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ perspective then we claiming to be ‘globalized’ and being ‘global citizens’ does not make sense to me . If the concept of ‘global citizen’ really exists then why don’t we consider everyone as one of ‘us’ and why don’t we eliminate the ‘them’ perspective?