Today is the 10th anniversary of the Pepsi-Cola of modern American terrorist attacks, the simultaneous bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. To mark the occasion, US Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger has said two things in particular that ably demonstrate that just because English words are coming out of someone’s mouth doesn’t necessarily mean he is saying anything.
Kenyan victims of the attack in Nairobi on August 7, 1998 were given aid for three years – money for health care, chronic care, school, etc – and then nothing. It’s not 100% clear to me that the US government has an ethical obligation to care for these people for a long time. I think it does – especially for Kenyan embassy workers. But every day, all over the world, people without the means to care for themselves or their families are innocent victims of violence, and though I fundamentally believe that we all together share a responsibility to provide for those who are unable to provide for themselves, I’m not sure that proximity to a US embassy when victimized gives one a senior claim.
But Ranneberger doesn’t engage that question. His answer to destitute Kenyans crying for help? "We simply don't, as a matter of policy, provide compensation. This is not something we've done anywhere in the world."
What is he, an AT&T operator? Oh, oh, it’s your policy. Well, I guess that settles it. If it’s your policy, there’s really nothing that any of us can do, huh? We’ll just have to make do with the tools that are available to us within the existing set of policies, just like everyone else. We’re not special, after all. No reason we should get treated any different from anyone else. That wouldn’t be fair at all. You know, fair. Like getting blinded by my exploding plate-glass window while I, an impoverished single mother, try to make breakfast for my kids before sending them off to a school that they are allowed to attend only because every other day I take the money I would have spent on food and put it into a jar the contents of which I use to pay school fees. But if it’s your policy, America, maker of rules, I totally understand.
Second, when Ranneberger was interviewed at the ceremony, he said, talking about the victims, that “the best way that we can honour them is to look forward and to look at what we've achieved over the past 10 years, to strengthen democracy in both the United States and in Kenya.”
Wh…What?! Like expanding and improving access to the polls? We face the most exclusionary, discriminatory voting climate in the US since the Civil Rights Act, and December’s presidential election in Kenya ripped that country apart at the seams, along tribal lines. Like ensuring due process and an independent judiciary? Now seems like a good time to mention that the first Guantanamo conviction was handed down yesterday by a panel of six military officers – a secret panel of six military officers. Like investing all in our communities with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? The current immigration climate is an embarrassment, to ourselves and to our heritage.
No, Ambassador, not one of the finer uses of language to mean things…
Thursday, August 7, 2008
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Using the word, "policy," to end the discussion seems to me a special case of a broader, toxic maneuver that makes a matter of choice seem to be a matter of inevitability. Examples are of this sort: "Americans reject government as the solution" (?Medicare?), "Health care must be fixed incrementally; we rejected dramatic change in 1993." "Americans don't like using other countries as models -- we need home-grown answers."
The declaration of choices as immutable facts is the refuge of the status quo. I am thinking that the best leaders reframe as possible what has been thought impossible. "It is our policy" means, exactly, "We choose this policy." And, what we choose, we can choose to change.
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