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September 11 and Beyond
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:48:04 -0400 (EDT)
What to say about September 11? In the days immediately following
the attack, it was difficult for me, as for so many of us, to move beyond
the sheer shock and pain of so much death, of each life so precious lost.
Since that terrible day, many people have said many things, and there is
little I can add. But perhaps I can highlight some of themes of the past
several weeks that may have considerable bearing on the how our nation
responds to this terrible tragedy, and how we respond in our own lives.
The meaning of September 11 -- beyond the tremendous grief and shock
and horror -- is still evolving, and will be for some time to come. What
does it mean to America? When Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert
F. Kennedy reflected on the United States and where it was heading. "In
this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is
perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we
want to move in." (To listen to his moving speech, which seems especially
relevant in our difficult times, go to
http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/r040468.htm.) It is a question well
worth asking today.
It is heartening to know that the overwhelming response of Americans
to this tragedy has been a tremendous display of generosity and a
willingness to help other people, strangers. In New York, three hundred
firefighters are among the missing, because they chose to enter two
flaming skyscrapers so that they could help other people get out.
Meanwhile, firefighters, police officers, iron workers, and others worked
tirelessly, risking their own safety, as they cleared away the rubble in
search of survivors, and continued to do so even as the odds of finding
survivors grew slimmer and slimmer.
Perhaps even more important is the way the nation has responded more
generally. People rushed to donate blood. People contribute money to
funds to help the survivors' families -- last Friday's television event
alone raised $150 million. And the government discovered that when the
need is great, we can find billions of dollars to meet that need -- at
least $20 billion of the emergency spending passed after the attacks will
be used to help New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania recover.
Americans saw pain, and rushed to help. Perhaps this was motivated
in part by empathy, in part by a sense of responsibility towards fellow
Americans who were victims of an attack that we felt was our tragedy too.
While the grief we feel is tremendous, perhaps even overwhelming at times,
this would be a good time -- at a time of enormous national unity and
generosity -- to reflect on the good we can still do around the world.
There is great pain, and there are enormous disasters, that merit our
generosity as we begin to reawaken to all the other things that still need
to be done at home and around the world. When the terrorists attacked
America, they attacked us, for we are part of America. When violence
befalls humanity, the violence of disease and poverty and war, that
violence strikes at us, for we are part of humanity. We could have been
the victims that terrible Tuesday - but for fortune, we could so easily
have been on those fateful flights, or in the World Trade Center. And but
for fortune, we could suffer any number of the other grave misfortunes in
this world.
Families of victims and those made temporarily homeless by the attack
need America's generosity, but so do those who were homeless before the
attack. Billions of dollars are needed for the recovery at home and to
stave off more death and destruction from terrorist acts. As we begin to
reawaken to the world, we should recognize again that billions of dollars
are also needed to help prevent the deaths of tens of millions of people
infected with and at risk of HIV/AIDS, and of people lacking clean water,
or infected with malaria, and to help stop the destruction of societies
that are losing huge portions of their population to AIDS, and are
weakened by poverty and ignorance and fear. The world stood with the
United States after the attack; now the United States has an unparalleled
opportunity and renewed responsibility to stand with the world.
Maybe this will help in an effort against terrorism. It may lead
some of the world's people to view America not as a force of arrogance
that they perceive is bent on spreading its own might, a view that
contributes to anti-American feelings, but as a force of good committed to
doing what is right (even if we get it wrong sometimes). And if, in the
words of Meron Benvenisti, former deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, our response
is designed "in accordance with the need to deal with the rotting soil in
which the hate, envy and frustration of the terrorists grew," then we will
be building a world that is more secure for us all. Along with the many
other fronts that will encompass America's response to terrorism, we have
the chance to spearhead a renewed global effort to address human needs and
human frustrations. If we do not embrace this opportunity, our response
may prove dangerously incomplete and only short term. In the long run,
this may be the most important area to address.
As it is necessary that we extend the humanity Americans have shown
so beautifully at home to suffering people everywhere, many have correctly
pointed out that we should be vigilant that we remain true to those ideals
that have been the foundation of our nation. One ideal is freedom, and
another is that we are a nation of many peoples, e pluribus unum.
September 11 has presented a challenge to both.
Much of America's foreign policy, even if sometimes in name more than
in practice, is founded on our support for freedom throughout the world.
There is a danger that we will sacrifice some measure of our support for
freedom in an effort to gain support for an international campaign against
terrorism. The United States must continue to condemn abuses against
those people who are unpopular with their governments, and not let those
governments frame the debate by calling anyone who opposes them
terrorists. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States supported dangerous
regimes and groups in the name of fighting the communist menace. We
supported dictators and helped fund civil wars in Latin America and
Africa, and as a result thousands of people were tortured and executed in
Latin America, and the turmoil of those dictators and wars still plague
many African nations.
We should take care not to repeat this mistake of condoning what is
wrong. As a short survey by Human Rights Watch demonstrates, countries
are already taking advantage of the new global effort against terrorism to
crack down on dissenters within their countries, and to cast ongoing
suppression as part of a war against terrorism. See
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/09/uspowell0924.htm. Terrorists attack
freedom, so it would be a sorry irony if, in the name of gaining support
for a fight against terrorism, we condone actions that also attack
freedom.
Another bedrock of our country is that we are a nation of
immigrants. From many one. E pluribus unum. We have seen some people who
reject this notion. In recent days, we have seen hundreds of acts of
discrimination, many violent, perpetrated against Muslims and other people
of Arabic or South Asian descent. The terrorists claim that America is
hostile to Islam, and some in America seem to be doing their best to prove
the terrorists right. I heard one Arab studying in the United States say
that he did not feel welcome here. These are sad words for our country to
hear.
Fortunately, most Americans reject this discrimination, and recognize
that it tears at the heart of our nation. Even as these terrible acts of
discrimination persist, another threat to our nation of immigrants has
emerged. An anti-terrorism bill now in Congress threatens immigrants'
basic liberties. Under the bill, the attorney general would have broad
powers to indefinitely detain any non-citizen for security reasons. We
live in a free nation, a nation of laws, and such a nation cannot steal
people out of their life and place them behind bars without good reason.
The bill, as currently formulated, lacks safeguards to ensure that the
government has strong reason to detain those it asserts are security
threats. The bill threatens to steal precious months and years of life
from innocent people who might be detained under it. It may make
immigrants feel a little less welcome in this nation of immigrants. And
it may have ramifications on anti-terrorist laws around the world. For
more information and to take action, please see an e-mail that I will
forward to you momentarily.
We respond to September 11 not only as a nation, but also as
individuals. That awful day reminded us how suddenly life can be taken
us. It is a reminder of what we know already; car accidents, suddenly
detected tumors, heart attacks, also quickly steal life away from us. But
the huge number of lives lost so suddenly in such an unexpected way makes
the fact that life is very fragile especially stark. The reminder seems
to compel us to ask ourselves whether the lives we are living today give
us meaning and fulfillment, because today is all we know for certain that
we have.
As we think about our own lives, we cannot help but look to those
people around us who contribute to that meaning and fulfillment. More
than 6,000, possibly 7,000, lives were lost, but many tens of thousands of
other lives were shattered. People whose friends and relatives perished
Tuesday will forever have an empty spot in their hearts. Loving the
people we love, caring for people for whom we care, being friends to our
friends, all take on a renewed urgency. The old friend we can't seem to
find time to call, the parent or brother or sister we can't seem to find
time to visit -- we never know when these opportunities will slip suddenly
away from us. As I write these words they seem almost unreal to me, but
last Tuesday did not feel real either. I hope that the acts of violence
that we have seen have been and will be vastly outnumbered by less visible
but no less real acts of love and friendship.
Besides these reminders of the need to value that which is truly
important, I think we also learned something about what is important to
us. Watching victims' friends and relatives talk about their missing
loved ones, we heard again and again that the missing person was generous
and was always helping other people. Given only a moment in front of the
camera, this is what people want the world to know about their loved ones.
Through the tremendous evil and lack of respect for life that visited us
on Tuesday, this sense of giving becomes a radiant ray of humanity. These
responses demonstrate that helping others is among our most deeply held
ideals about ourselves and, perhaps, by extension, about our nation.
I began this e-mail with a reference to Robert Kennedy's statement
following Martin Luther King's assassination, and it is with this
statement that I would like to end. There are many ways in which the
tragedies of 1968 and 2001 are different. But at their heart, I think one
of the biggest lessons of both of these tragedies is similar.
The horrible things that happen in this world cause us to ask why
there is so much pain and why all that we have and care about can be
taken from us so quickly? We come face to face with the basic truth of
how fragile life is. We are sad, and we are scared. But then we find
that we are not alone in our feelings, in our grief, in our fear. We
realize that the pain of loss would not be so deep if our love of life
were not so great. We see how much we need one another, and care about
one another. Through love for one another, and this love of life that
will not die, we can find the strength to forge ahead.
In his speech, Robert Kennedy quoted a Greek poet and dramatist,
Aeschylus: "'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by
drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes
wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States
. . . is love, and wisdom, and compassion towards one another, and a
feeling of justice towards those who still suffer. . . ." These were good
guides in 1968, and they are good guides today.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you.
Salaam (peace),
Eric
"I have only dreams: to build a better world, a world of harmony
and understanding, a world in which it is a joy to live. This is not
asking for too much." -- Yitzhak Rabin
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