Posted by Steve Kanavas on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 at 9:59PM :
Having been in Saudi, Jordan, Israel and Syria a while back, maybe, I think maybe, I see just a glint of the Islamic personality. (oxymoron?) So, Joe, please excuse the rant, delete it if inapropriate, but I'm gonna vent then I'll shut up. sak
In this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting our disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the yet unknown author of this suffering. You unspeakable fu%&. You caused my wife to cry for her relatives. Unfortunately for you they were not in the area that day.
What lesson did you hope to teach us by your cowardly attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon. Are you sad that you didn't collapse our nations Capitol? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please understand clearly that you have failed miserably. Do you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just UNITED us together.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, and political division, but actually a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae, even a cartoon mouse. We are fortunately wealthy beyond your comprehension from our work ethics. We are spoiled by the ready availability of toys and material goods, and because of that, we walk through life with a certain arrogant sense of pompous entitlement. We developed. We earned.
We are fundamentally decent though, - peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God. Some people - you, perhaps - think that any or all of this makes us weak. You are sorely wrong. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals. Our pain now forges strength.
We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel, but indeed is reality. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world.
You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But there's a world of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible beyond belief in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any goddamn cost, and go to any length in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without fear of contradiction.
I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future. In the days to come, there will be recriminations and accusations, and the finger pointing to determine whose security failures allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security with misguided talk of revoking our basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad but determined. Unimaginably determined. This aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's internal bickering is put on hold.
As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we and other civilized nations will rise in defense of decency. So I ask you again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange:
We do not believe in your hiding under your fundamentalist veil mentality of inshalla. (It's gods will) It's your religion and you are entitled to it. Again, you don't know our people. You don't have a clue as to what we're capable of. This time the world is united. You don't know what you just started. You don't know that you are alone now. You don't know that your neighbors may now look the other way. It will not be pretty, many of us may die, but you're about to learn a long term yet very swift and painful lesson. It's our Jihad now. Our fauqua. Our religious war. Our inshalla.
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