By Albert J. Ripicci
Greenwich Comment
Today, on the anniversary of 9/11, Americans across the country will reflect on and commemorate the senseless loss of life at the World Trade Center. They will also denounce the heinous act of terrorism that led to this tragedy.
As with most catastrophes, there is a tendency to place our personal tragedies into a context that raises its significance in relation to those calamities that befall people of disparate and distant cultures. Recent history is replete with acts of barbarism against humanity. One would have thought that after the lessons learned from the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the hundreds of thousands murdered and brutalized in the rape of Nanking. China, that the would community would have been committed to the slogan “Never Again.”
Alas, in the second half of the 20th century, the likes of Idi Amin slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people in Uganda, while Pol Pot systematically butchered 3 million Cambodians. Other despots, not the least of whom was Saddam Hussein, have wreaked similar havoc on their own people, while disease and natural disaster have likewise taken a heavy toll.
Over the years, I have grown to wonder whether or not we, as Americans, take the suffering of others as seriously as our own. Likewise, do people of other nations share a sense of loss when tragedy strikes the United States?
To some degree, that question was answered for me while flying into Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, last September. I made the journey as part of a medical/dental volunteer team that was returning to Mongolia to provide care for the rural inhabitants living not far from the Siberian border.
Mongolia is a desperate country. Recent figures indicate it has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. In this land of nomadic herders, health care is sparse if nonexistent in rural areas. Tortuous winters have driven the homeless, many of them abandoned children, to live in the sewers and tunnels, which offer a semblance of heat that is generated from an underground hot-water system. It would seem these people have enough hardship of their own to deal with, without expending emotional energy related to a tragedy befalling the most affluent country in the world, the United States.
On the final leg of our flight, we departed from Beijing en route to Mongolia on Mongolian Airlines. The flight attendant provided a variety of magazines to the passengers, among which was an English translation of the newspaper “Mongolia, This Week.” In bold letters a headline stated, “Terror anniversary marked in Ulaanbaatar.” The text that followed gave notice that, “The first anniversary of the worst terrorist act in history was marked in Ulaanbaatar on Wednesday, Sept. 11.”
Further excerpts portrayed solemn ceremonies held throughout the capital, as well as describing an essay competition among the pupils in the Orchlon secondary school, where students read their articles reflecting their feelings. Most notable, however, was an act of brotherhood and solidarity in which “Employees of the Mongolian Chamber of Commerce and Industry donated their one-day wages to the fund set up to support the families of the victims.
It is indeed comforting to know that even those who suffer daily in distant lands can summon the compassion to sacrifice on behalf of Americans.
As we struggle once more will the horrific memory of the Sept. 11 loss, let us not be unmindful that the world beyond our own borders still requires our compassion and sacrifice as well.
Albert J. Repicci, is an orthoibm list in Greenwich.