I feel numb. How did this happen? Why did this happen? How could people hate this much'have this little respect for life?
Emotions run so high and wild that the body just wants to shut itself off and pretend it did not happen. This is indeed a rift in history. Nothing is the same. We will never feel the same as a nation or as individuals.
I never used to understand the feelings of my parents and their generation'how they knew exactly where they were and what they were doing the day President Kennedy died. I had been fortunate enough not to have to live through an event like that. No drawn-out wars that we were involved in, no despicable acts that gripped the entire nation in prolonged sorrow. The first World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City, Kenya, Tanzania, the USS Cole'all of them seemed somehow isolated events that didn't alter who we were and how we would live our lives.
Only twice, when the Challenger exploded and when the earthquake hit San Francisco during the World Series, was I watching television as the event unfolded. For the Challenger I was too young to truly grapple with what had just happened. For the earthquake, I felt numb, but nothing like this. That was Mother Nature'this was humanity at its worst.
I know now. I remember nearly every moment of Sept. 11, 2001'how I found out, what I did, what I felt.
We have all seen the pictures so often that they have become ingrained in our psyche. What do we do now that terror and destruction have occurred on our soil in a way we never before imagined possible?
Now that we can no longer hide behind the guise of invulnerability, what do we feel? Who are we? How do we react?
Many commentators have drawn comparisons to Israel. Now we know what it feels like to desire only security, but understand that there is very little protection from people who are content with dying for their cause, from people who respect their lives only in the faculty it presents to damage the lives of others.
We must learn from Israel. In the face of Palestinian suicide bombers, Israel has retaliated with gunship assaults, F-16 bombings and tanks destroying homes, resulting in escalating violence. Do we act similarly? The Palestinians see American-made weapons killing their people, their civilians, their innocent victims, their mothers and fathers and neighbors and loved ones, all of whom are nameless and faceless to us. Hate for America and Americans based on this is not justifiable or even truly understandable, but it could have played a role in what happened Tuesday. No matter how little it should have, it may have. How do we react now?
In a column that was almost eerily poignant, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times Sept. 11 that the war in Israel and the West Bank had become a war of the mind. He described the walls that people were erecting to protect themselves from bombers and snipers, the fear with which mothers reacted to their children's desires to go to any public, crowded place that could possibly be a target. And he described how the walls had become deeper and more entrenched than mere concrete. They were poisoning minds, deepening fears and consuming everyone with an indomitable hate.
Do we build walls? In our minds? In our hearts?
Do we panic? Fear overwhelmed us Tuesday, as our emotions overwhelmed our senses, causing a frenzy at gas stations and our words to beat the drum of vengeance and retribution. Whoever did this to us, this is how they wanted us to react. They want us to seek vengeance. They want us to be afraid. They want us to scream for justice while we build walls inside our minds, while we begin to hate Arabs anonymously, while we begin to distrust our fellow Americans.
Will we re-invoke the doctrine of collateral damage that the Clinton administration so callously created to justify civilian death tolls in military actions?
If we do, we become the terrorists. They become a virus that has infected our souls. We become insolent and afraid. They win.
Those who have threatened Muslim students on our campus have already lost. How many minds have the terrorists already killed?
We don't have to become them. We don't have to be poisoned by them.
We must, as a nation, come together, but not to unite against a faceless them, either here or abroad. We cannot allow our emotions to fulfill prophecies that destroy our sense of liberty, our integrity or our hearts.
It seems a simple proposition, the recognition of humanity, but it is being assaulted. The terrorists assaulted it. I pray that we do not.
