Put politics aside after tragic events
It’s been a harsh and sad time for many Canadians these past few days, following the news of the downing of the airliner in Tehran and the loss of so many Canadian lives.
The first matter to record is genuine sympathy and regard for all those Canadians dead from the airplane tragedy in Tehran, caught up in the maelstrom of international tensions, that followed in the train of the American preemptive strike against the terrorist leader Soleimani.
Word now, as I write and as far as any reports may be regarded at this stage as definitive, is that the destruction of the airplane, the loss of lives, resulted from a (possibly) accidental targeting of the plane by Iranian military. Whatever the circumstances, nothing alters the grief and loss felt by the families of all those innocents aboard that flight. The sadness of every family member now mourning the death of another family member will be little impacted, in the immediate term, by the how and why of their loved one’s obliteration. Grief is a very precise and overwhelming emotion: it concentrates on the person or persons lost, the void left by that loss, and the genuine inconsolability when the circle of family love is broken by death.
I think it fair also to say that there is in Canada, in Canadians’ understanding of each other, something quite unmixed and sincere when they offer to those in pain and loss their sympathy and regard. That the event specifically wounds one singular community in Canada, that of Canadian Iranian immigrants, or those of that ancestry born here, charges its impact. Within that community the sense of shock and sorrow will be naturally magnified in comparison with those not so affiliated. I know for example that when Newfoundland went through the sinking of the Ocean Ranger and its 83 lost — though I am not making any connection with the nature of both events — when Newfoundlanders heard that news it reached to the hearts and minds of all of Newfoundland with a strength and affect impossible to register outside the province. I feel the same must be the case between those from Iran who are now Canadian; that you are feeling more sharply and more painful what we, outside, may only in sympathy imagine.
Of the politics on the tragic moment, I think we could let those pass for a day or two, while tears are still flowing and relations still striving to absorb the shock and loss so suddenly thrown upon them, before we begin the inevitable back and forth of ( mostly useless) partisan and sectarian shadowboxing. There is so little that is said in politics today about anything, that is not first — and spuriously — weighed for the advantage of the speaker or party, rather than for the true substance of what is at stake. The origin of most political comment is not a search for clarity, or truth, or even the offer of plain information. The origin of most political thought is this question: Will what I ( the politician, left or right) say, what I argue in any given case, hurt ___ (fill in the name of the enemy, the other side leader I despise)?
Can we not then resist, for a tragedy of this scope, visited on so many of our people, the impetuous reach for particular or partisan comment just for now. Of the few hard and central facts there is no room for speculation: we know where the plane was, from where it took off, and almost to a full certainty that it was an Iranian missile that downed it. Over the longer term it is of course entirely different. Understanding the who and the why and the how of this tragedy will be essential for the emotional balance of those most cruelly affected.
But not everything has to answer to the immediate political passions that enshroud so heartbreaking an event, and we will all be much better off leaving those passions to have their play on a later day. Respect for those lost and genuine sympathy for those bearing that loss asks for nothing less. It’s just a question of simple human dignity. For now it is but right and sufficient to express our sympathy and respect their sorrow, and put a hold on all else.