Sep 11, an SDA Response.

[Sojourner]

I suspect that there are a number of us here who if asked would likely be able to remember where they were when they heard the news of the World Trade Centre being hit by aeroplanes and the deaths happening of all those people. It was during the evening here in Australia and I was in the small unit we rented back then and was getting ready to go to sleep, the tv program was interrupted by this news and we watched it for several hours. In the morning the Christian radio station had a well known pastor come in to assist the morning show and calls were taken as the whole thing was discussed at length and news was passed on as it became available.

Shocked, horrified, angry were some of the emotions that I remember feeling at the time and afterwards. The media in Australia showed pictures of people in the Palestinian areas celebrating what had happened and this proved to be very controversial in the days following. As time passed Alqueda and Bin Laden became the focus and as we know war was then begun in Afghanistan which has continued until recent times and has seen the killing and suffering of so many people on all sides as a result. What concerns me is that its been revealed that the number of veterans committing suicide after returning from Afghanistan now outnumbers those troops killed in this conflict. Post Traumatic Stress is rampant and many veterans and others are suffering badly in this regard.

The questions that I have are twofold,

First, would you like to share with the group where you were when this happened and what your own reflections at the time were?

Secondly, I would like to discuss a philosophical question with you. Suppose in the days after the attacks, the US Government phoned the President and Administration of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and asked you to be responsible for the response from the U.S towards Afghanistan and the Taliban. What would the response have been? Would it have been to go to war in Afghanistan, would it have been a response focused around material aid and social justice issues in Afghanistan? How would you deal with a response to an organisation that appears on the surface to be keen to kill as many people as it takes for their version of fundamentalism to be enforced on all the people in the world?

Naturally we have the benefit of hindsight which George W Bush and others did not, yet I would still like to have the discussion on what the SDA may have done if they were asked to make this response?

[Gregory Matthews]

Quote:

Suppose in the days after the attacks, the US Government phoned the President and Administration of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and asked you to be responsible for the response from the U.S towards Afghanistan and the Taliban.

This is a hypothetical question that would never happen. As it would never happen it has no real value.

Yes, the question could have been proposed as: What do you think that the response should have been and why. That question might have some value.

It also is an impossible question: To ask the administration of the SDA Church such a question is effectively to ask it for a formal, official answer. Such a question presupposes that the SDA Church could come up with a formal answer in a timely manner. Never happen. The administrative wheels of the SDA Church do not turn that rapidly.

As it is a question that is impossible to be answered, it has no real value in discussing.

[phkrause]

I'm in agreement with Gregory, but I will tell you where we were, and that would be on vacation in Florida. Some guy was telling everyone that a little airplane hit one of the World Trade Center buildings. Than we went into a building that had a TV and they showed the first building being hit by a plane. So we went back to our place we were staying at and spent the rest of the day watching the news.