Entry 43: Bengazi Revisited and a Land of Confusion

It’s been a little over 8 months since the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Bengazi, Libya that claimed the life of U.S. Diplomat, Chris Stevens, and 3 others.  We’ve learned since that fateful day in September of last year that this was a coordinated, premeditated effort by a group of heavily armed, well trained militia personnel with knowledge of the architecture and layout of the embassy, rather than a spontaneous uprising from protesters reacting to a video about the prophet Mohammed.

What a difference hindsight makes.

My previous post had been a reaction to the initial reports from September of 2012, where it was thought persons had stormed the embassy and killed in the name of their God, Allah, and his supposed offense to the release of a video that depicted their prophet in a less than respectful way.

I’d brought up the question of whether it was harmful to believe in God in general, and Allah in particular.

Despite the more recent information we have about this attack on the embassy, I think the question, and its answer or answers are still relavent.  But really, at the end of the day, so to speak, like most questions, the answer is nearly always a big ‘It depends’.

A person who chooses to believe in a said god or gods can do great good or great harm on a daily basis for reasons possibly completely unrelated to that same person’s belief in said god or gods.

The flip side of that is equally true…a person who does not believe in anything dealing with the supernatural can do great good or great harm on a daily basis irrespective of that disbelief.

While the question of harm by believing in a god or gods is relavent, I must concede that it’s actually less interesting than trying to get at the motivations for violence on our planet, and trying to address those motivations with real counter motivations to not do violence.

There’s a song by the group Genesis that I really like.

I hadn’t listened to this song in probably 20 years until a few months ago.  I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed one day, and noticed a post by a friend who’d commented that the politicians engaged in the ‘fiscal cliff’ discussions in Congress in December of 2012 reminded her of the puppets used in the 1986 music video ‘Land Of Confusion”.

I immediately was transported back inside my head to my sophomore year in high school where I’d heard the song for the first time, and watched the video on Friday Night Videos on NBC late night (anybody remember that show?)

I liked both the music and the lyrics.

I was 15 years old at the time, and not really ‘up to speed’, so to speak, on the political realities that were being mocked in the song’s video; realities of what it takes for a human being to commit to fight in a war for his or her country.  From 15 years old to the ripe old age of 42 where I sit now, those realities are now very apparent to me having lived between those ‘bookends’ of the former and latter ages.

One lyric in particular stands out….

“I won’t be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right”.

I can only think about what has happened in the Middle East and Africa over the past 2-3 years with Tunisia starting the so called ‘Arab Spring’ and wonder how much courage it takes for people to rise up and possibly utter these same words from the song to their loved ones.

How hard that must be.

The song continues to haunt…