Re: [APML] Black Tuesday [OT]

[Tonyhallas@aol.com]

Hello All,

      This was forwarded to me by a friend... it is a wonderful and eloquent 
statement about being an American.... I think I just heard some commercial 
airliners going by my house...
maybe we are flying again!          Tony 
      
The barbarians will learn what America's all about
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Syndicated columnist, Miami Herald

They pay me to tease shades of meaning from social and cultural issues, to 
provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. 
But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, 
the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be 
addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World 
Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? 
Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did 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 brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a 
family rent by racial, cultural, political and class division, but a family 
nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional 
energy on pop cultural minutiae, a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's 
misfortune, a cartoon mouse.

We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and 
material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a 
certain sense of blithe entitlement. 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're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot 
be measured by arsenals.

Yes, we're in pain now. 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.

Both in terms of the awful scope of its 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, indeed, the history of the world. 
You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there's a gulf 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 
hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental 
pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. 
When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any 
cost, 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 days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing 
to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to 
prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided 
talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, 
chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

You see, there is steel beneath this velvet. That aspect of our character is 
seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's 
bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will 
mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

Still, I keep wondering what it was 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: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're about. You 
don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.


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