M O N D A Y M I L L I O N *

This morning I came up with a notion for a Monday Million because of several things I saw on TV last night. Perhaps today's date adds a bit of poignancy to what I was reminded of - but not necessarily.

First I watched the first half of the movie "Path to 9-11". What a mess! The terrorists, the goverment agents on the ground trying to stop terrorism, the handcuffed beaurocrats that ought to be able to make things happen. The movie did pretty much identify the "bad guys". But also shown were so many (countless) people caught between them and us in tugs of war of ideaology, cross fire of danger in terms of actual bullets and bombs but also in terms of the psychological horrors that they must endure. This is not limited to the risks that agents and informants take with regard to themselves and their families. I have feelings about terrorists that I don't need to describe. But I also have painful empathy for innocent people whose lives are destroyed, of kids whose lives may never materialize into anything we would consider pleasant and fullfilling.

Not wanting to watch the previews of part two of the movie - partly because I didn't want to get too much visualization of that day's (this day's) event's even though I want to watch the show to get some sense of what all was happening to try and prevent it... and what failed - I switched to the documentary channel to fill in 20 minutes before the nightly news.

There, Verona and I saw a documentary about a photo journalist who has had the "opportunity???" to be in some pretty nasty places while some horrific things were happening. Things I've known about - probably most of us have known about. When we tuned in, he was recounting his experiences in Sarajevo where ironically ethnic cleansing of masses of Islamic people was the atrocity. It was on such a big scale. I don't know numbers but it was horrendous and my impressions were not a function of any number higher than just one.... just one person, nameless, a man, a woman that stopped to help the man, or a child who was innocently riding on a city bus but just happened to be in the rifle sites of a sniper that decided to take that particular shot. Any one of so many thousands upon thousands of people so ruthlessly slaughtered was enough of a number for me to be heartbroken that such things have ever happened.... let alone that they continue to happen in other parts of the world as I'm typing right now.

In several parts of Africa, similar "ethnic cleansing" or just sheer plays for power and money result in terrible deaths to millions of innocent people. Withholding food supplies and using starvation is a weapon - there and in Sarajevo. But in other documentaries I've heard/seen the evidence of brutal butchery..... of people. Each person... each individual of all the millions that have so struggled and died is a tragedy of nearly incomprehensible sadness when you emphathize just a bit with that individual's plight. Its more than I can stand to think of very much. But what I don't want to do even more than think of it on that level for long is to forget or to be unaware of it having happened, of it continuing to happen. I'm at a loss as to how I can be a means to effect change. But I will not turn away from the terrible knowledge of it.

The burden of knowing such things, of realizing more will come is indeed a heavy and unsavory one. I don't know how to save one life in those places. But I want to remember that those lives exist, existed... that they are/were people with feelings just like us. We remember and make monuments to great heroes and leaders in our wars. That is okay with me. But somehow I think each of us need to make at least some space in our hearts for a monument to individuals that have lived such terrible and tormented moments well beyond physical suffering that must be unbearable in itself.

*Or multiples of, significant fractions of, or give or take a few dozen, or thousand etc. Point is... things mentioned here include a LOT of inidividual elements of concern.