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September 11, 2007
Coming Back Home to 9/11
Everyone remembers, of course, where they were and what they were doing on 9/11. This year the anniversary falls on a Tuesday, as did the original event. I told someone yesterday that I felt like I had missed it all, by which I mean sharing the common experience of 9/11 of my friends and family--the phone calls back and forth, the gathering around the television or listening on the car radios--so many have said how they remained "glued" to the TV with coworkers (as was the case with the Touchstone staff) or family as they watched the attack and its aftermath unfold before the eyes of the cameras in real time. Me? I was several thousand miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, oblivious, praying the Ninth Hour (3 PM). (I've written about this circumstance.)
When I found out through my neighborhood paper that a local commemoration for those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 attacks would be held just a few blocks from my home at the Veterans Monument at Milwaukee and Higgins, where I often catch the bus, it seemed that this was something that I must attend today. I wasn't "here" on Sept. 11, 2001, so I missed something, with family and friends. It doesn't matter to me, for some reason, that I may be there without family and friends. It's here, on the soil of my homeland, in my neighborhood.
I suppose I am also taken with the fact that the monument, erected in 1945, about the same time as the house in which we now live, is maintained in part by Joe Dallman, now 83, who was inducted into the Army at the very spot for service in WWII. Dallman, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, will be there. Also there will be William Sauter, who flew bombing missions during WWII. I only wish my father Paul, who lives in Michigan, could be there today. He's a veteran of Anzio.
I think there is value in rubbing shoulders with such men, for whom the world has changed before their very eyes in ways they would have never dreamed of. But even WWII--and its unspeakable carnage and concentration camps--was not likely something they dreamed of in their boyhood days. The human heart contains the seeds of evil from generation to generation, and our business is to apply the measures of faith given us by grace to turn the tide whenever and wherever we can. Vigilance against evil must always be maintained. I go today, at least, to give some tribute to whom tribute is due. Perhaps I can shake the hand of a veteran. I'll tell them my father sends his greetings across the miles. Perhaps in this way, I can own 9/11 and all the rest a bit closer to home. But ultimately, we all must move on and find our way to the words of the Good Thief, who is remembered in the prayers at the Ninth Hour: "Remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom."
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It was early in the morning and a subcontractor came to our home to do some work. He knocked on the door and asked me if I heard what happened. I was still waking up and said no. He told me that as he was driving over, he heard on the radio that the WTC was being destroyed and burning from a terrorist attack.
Turned on the tv, and life in America was changed by that moment. (At least in Airport security with long waiting lines!)
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 10:18:26 AM
FWIW, this theological conservative supports our troops and supports our Commander-in-Chief for his command decision to engage our country's resources on the War on Terror.
Freedom is not free. And peace must be vigilantly protected.
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 10:40:15 AM
Something similar happened to me. I was living in England when President Kennedy was assassinated. It felt very distant, and I didn't realize the enormous impact it had on America until I came back nine months later. (I was quite anti-American at the time so I might have been deliberately minimizing any impact it could have on me personally.)
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 11, 2007 11:03:00 AM
Judy,
I too was indifferent to the impact on America when JFK was shot, but then I was only two-years-old at the time. ;-)
Posted by: GL | Sep 11, 2007 11:10:47 AM
GL,
Youngster! But wise beyond your years.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 11, 2007 12:26:07 PM
On the morning of the attack, I was driving into downtown Los Angeles to an arbitration in the upper stories of the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi. I had no idea that this building (and the spot where I would be) was Ground Zero for al Queda’s planned attack on Los Angeles. Just as I entered the downtown loop, word came on the radio that all major offices in downtown Los Angeles had been shut down. I turned around and went home. I “own” 9/11 in a very intimate way.
Posted by: Bill R | Sep 11, 2007 12:31:26 PM
I was driving to work, getting close to the Washington beltway, when I heard the news of the first Twin Tower and then the second one. I didn't know what to do so I proceeded to my office in Arlington. On the way I heard the news about the Pentagon, which is about two miles from where my office was. When I entered my building some people in the lobby were going up to the roof to see if they could see anything. I went up to my office to tell them I was going home. Everyone was in the conference room glued to the TV. The receptionist said my husband had just called to tell me to go home. I got out before the huge traffic crush that left the Washington area shortly after, stopped in Frederick to pick up my daughter from school, and went home. Later my co-workers thanked me for leaving, because after I left the boss sent everybody home.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 11, 2007 12:52:40 PM
I was processing dusty 19th and early 20th century photos in a warehouse facility for a university library; some students next to me were deep in General William Westmoreland's papers. I wondered why the normally-unflappable Political Collections archivist had to come tell me about some Piper Cub crashing into a NYC building (that's how I tried to process the news, editing "plane" to a likely and non-theatening possibility). My mainland Chinese grad assistant watched events with horror, and all of us with considerable interest, though she would wisely wait a few days before inquiring about the peculiar non-Chineseness of the responses she observed.
Posted by: Joe Long | Sep 11, 2007 2:09:48 PM
On an average day Americans murder more people (unborn children) than died in the 9/11 attacks. They have done this not on a single day, but on 12,650 days thus far. I cannot contemplate the horrific, murderous attacks on 9/11/01 without being overwhelmed by how the guilt and bloodshed of the American people and rulers are orders of magnitude greater.
TUAD, while I honor the courage of the American soldiers in Iraq, I cannot understand their work as a defense of freedom. Our Lord explained (to an audience that incorrectly thought itself free), that the only freedom worth discussing is freedom from sin, that those given to sin are slaves to sin. A nation guilty of mass murder (murder of its own children, no less) and proud (rather than repentant) for its actions -- such a nation is living in abject slavery, a slavery made all the deeper for being self-chosen. The war in Iraq may or may not be justifiable, but it is neither defending nor pursuing freedom. At best it is making the nation comfortable to continue wallowing in its slavery.
Posted by: Reid | Sep 11, 2007 2:26:40 PM
>>>TUAD, while I honor the courage of the American soldiers in Iraq, I cannot understand their work as a defense of freedom.<<<
That's because you're thick, Reid.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 11, 2007 2:30:28 PM
In a way I owe my life now to 9/11. I was a visiting assistant professor at William & Mary. (I had no classes that day and spent it glued to the internet.) The attack on the tower and the subsequent anthrax episode motivated me to try to do something different and...relevant. When a friend offered me the job I currently have, I took it. Being rather timid and risk-averse, I don't think I would have ventured into something new, otherwise.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Sep 11, 2007 2:31:54 PM
>At best it is making the nation comfortable to continue wallowing in its slavery.
No, at best it is delivering justice to those who militantly persecute the church.
Posted by: David Gray | Sep 11, 2007 2:42:21 PM
Reid, failure to outlaw and prosecute homocide (especially infanticide!) is a terrible flaw in any society- indeed some of the guilt of murder does surely rest on a government which permits it.Just the sort of negligence and weakness which left the "high places" intact through Israel and Judah's better kings.
Yet as the one developed country where abortion is even TREATED as a moral issue - as the fighting rearguard of what used to be Christendom - and as the world's best visible hope for a Christian cultural resurgence, I think America most certainly IS worth the efforts of all of her defenders.
And I daresay, in a Islamic country, you'd find more mundane and earthly expressions of freedom to be "worth discussing" after all. (Of course discussing them could be dangerous, in that case.)
Posted by: Joe Long | Sep 11, 2007 2:45:02 PM
Probably people with many others dependent on them tend to be risk-averse, and rightly so, Gene.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 11, 2007 2:47:28 PM
"TUAD, while I honor the courage of the American soldiers in Iraq, I cannot understand their work as a defense of freedom."
Reid, what do you understand of the American soldiers' work and mission in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe?
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 2:55:48 PM
Well, I was going to stay out of this, but what the hell?
On September 11, I was working at an office at Tysons Corner. My wife called me up around 8:30 to tell me that she had heard a plane flew into the World Trade Center. I went to the health club on the other side of the building, where they had a television in the lounge, just in time to see the second tower go down. Around this time, I also heard that a plane had flown into the Pentagon. My sister-in-law and niece both worked for a financial company in 6 World Trade Center. When I saw the pictures of the Pentagon, I realized that had I still worked there, my old office would have been obliterated. The I heard that there was a fourth plane, still missing. Wild rumors abounded. The White House, the Capitol and various DC office buildings were being evacuated. My wife called and said they were evacuating the CIA, but that the parking lots were jammed (only two gates out onto roads already jammed. CIA headquarters is right on the Potomac River, on the approach to National Airport. Impossible to miss it. My wife said they were going upstairs to give the bird to the plane if it came after them, Then she told me the school had called, and I should go get the kids,
Which was fun, because their school was located in Alexandria, just south of the Pentagon. To get there, I had to exploit every back road I knew. And when I got there, because the school is on Arlington Ridge, the heights overlooking the Potomac, I could look down and see the smoke and flames pouring from the building.
And at that moment, I felt shame, and then I felt a great boiling anger. And I knew that the world had changed--or rather, not changed. My entire adult life had been spent fighting one existential threat to freedom in the world. And I realized that the rest of my life--and the lives of my children--would be spent fighting a new threat.
I lost friends that day, in the Pentagon. My younger daughter had a classmate who lost his father on the plane that flew into the Pentagon. My sister-in-law and niece survived unscathed, though we couldn't contact them for many hours, because my niece acted intelligently for the first time in her life. After the first plane hit, No. 6 World Trade Center was evacuated, and my niece and her mother were watching the firemen evacuating the tower. The the second plane hit, and my daughter turned to her mother and said, "Come on, we're leaving RIGHT NOW." The got the last subway to Brooklyn before they closed the system.
My wife's husband was slower, and he had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and spend the night with some friends, until my sister could come fetch him back to Staten Island. My sister says the ride over the Verazzano Bridge was surreal, because where the Towers had been was just a plume of smoke.
Which is why arrant nonsense such as that spouted by Reid sticks in my craw.
Let's apply his logic with a minor historical transposition:
A nation guilty of of racial segregation, and proud (rather than repentant) for its actions -- such a nation is living in abject slavery, a slavery made all the deeper for being self-chosen. The war against Gemany may or may not be justifiable, but it is neither defending nor pursuing freedom. At best it is making the nation comfortable to continue wallowing in its slavery.
See--no nation is ever without sin, because nations are aggregations of men. Men sin, and sin cannot be eradicated from the world because its part of fallen human nature. But that does not absolve us to fight against evil, even while acknowledging our own evil. And it does not mean there is no such thing as freedom and goodness in the world, or that these are not worth fighting and dying for. Reid needs to talk to some of the people who actually have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, and ask them whether they think they are fighting for freedom--not merely our own, but the freedom of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan who truly want to be free. Reid has the luxury of judgmentalism and moral relativism, because he does not live in a place like Iraq and Afghanistan, and he should pray to God he never does. He should talk to people who lived under Saddam, who lived under the Taliban, or, if he still harbors illusions about Vietnam being a mistake, too, talk to some people who had to live under the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese communists. I live in Northern Virginia--I can introduce him to dozens.
Reid's little Jermiad is just a cheap stunt, because it allows him to preen, whithout ever having to consider making real sacrifices themselves. After all, it's not like Reid is likely to want an abortion, nor is Reid in any real position to do anything about abortion, and no doubt he would get the vapors at the notion of doing a John Brown number on abortionists and abortion clinics. So he can talk big about America not fighting for freedom because it suffers from the sin of abortion. Big deal. There was never a time when America was not suffering from some sin or another. Before 1865, it was slavery. After 1865, it was racism. But somehow, I suspect, World Wars I & II really was fought for freedom, despite that, as were the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and that long, nasty struggle about which I suspect Reid knows next to nothing that ought to be called World War III, but was commonly called the Cold War.
Well, now we're fighting World War IV (or V or VI, depending on whether you count the Seven Years War and/or the Napoleonic Wars as I and II), and if Reid thinks we aren't fighting for freedom, let him go live with our enemies for a few months and then compare.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 11, 2007 3:11:03 PM
I was sitting in my first period Missouri History class, my senior year of high school. My dad and I were planning to fly up to visit Wheaton College later that day. We turned on the television in time to see the second plane hit, and we left it on long enough to watch both the towers go down.Strangely, after first period, the rest of the school day was conducted as normal. I didn't fly up to Wheaton, though.
At the time, I felt an odd detachment from it all--I remember thinking that it was all very far away, and I was unlikely to know anyone directly involved. In hindsight, though, I think this was a defense mechanism, and I was actually more profoundly affected by it than I realize. I wonder if some of my fascination with catastrophe and sudden transformation is attributable to that experience.
Posted by: Ethan C. | Sep 11, 2007 3:28:39 PM
I was just finishing up getting ready for school. As I crossed the hall from my bedroom to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I heard my parents' clock radio- someone was saying something rather excitedly about the Wold Trade Center and a "bombing," I thought "Funny, that happened in the winter, why are they talking about it in September?"
After brushing my teeth I went downstairs. My mom had the TV on, which was unusual for so early in the morning. "Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center in New York," she said, and I turned to look at the screen. I had barely registered the flames of Tower 1 and the little "Live" logo in the corner of the screen when I saw something moving towards the towers. "Is that another plane?" I asked, and then a second later it hit, with a huge fireball.
A few minutes later we all piled in the car and went to school. It was completely unreal. I was a junior in high school, and my first period class was chemistry. Our teacher was a Vietnam vet, awarded the Purple Heart (rumor had it around school that he was seriously wounded 42 times. He only has 9 fingers.). When time came for the morning ritual of saying the pledge of allegiance, I saw a look on his face I won't forget. I'm pretty sure tehre were tears in his eyes, and I found myself barely able to stumble through the words of the pledge.
Our school was chaos all day. Every classroom had a TV on, watching events unfold. Some teachers took all their students into the library and sat all together. There was some talk of whether the district would cancel all classes for the rest of the day, and send us home, but in the end nothing hapened, except that we sat and watched replys of the disaster until we could see it even when we closed our eyes.
Posted by: RMC | Sep 11, 2007 4:08:19 PM
Just a note to all: please limit your comments to 9/11 (and not debate Iraq) in this post. If nothing else, out of respect for those who died and those who lost loved ones on 9/11.
Posted by: Jim Kushiner | Sep 11, 2007 4:09:57 PM
Bravo to Stuart's latest post!
I'm very definitely the odd man out here. At the time I was working a 3:00 pm - 1:30 am shift, so I was sound asleep when 9/11 started. I woke up about 11:00 and first saw the news when the home page for my e-mail/Internet program came up on my computer screen. But since I also didn't own a television (and generally loathe the device in any case), I was not glued to a screen either. I read the breaking story; said to myself "This means war"; called my government workplace to learn it had been closed for the day; and went about my chores, waiting some hours before looking up more news to allow time for hard facts to sift to the top. Living alone at the time, I didn't have anyone on had to discuss events with either.
Posted by: James A. Altena | Sep 11, 2007 4:21:55 PM
With acknowledgement to Jim Kushiner, I want to be the second to yell "BRAVO!!!" to Stuart's latest post.
It was magnificent and eloquent, incisive and thoroughly persuasive.
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 4:37:07 PM
I was home. Our oldest daughter had been sick the night before and my wife and I had stayed up with her in shifts. I was up for the early shift and for some strange reason felt an urge to read from the Book of Isaiah. I had read about the first ten chapters when my wife came downstairs, maybe ten minutes before ten (Central Time) and went up to bed to get some sleep. About ten minutes later, just as I was drifting off, the radio alarm (which she had set for ten) went off and, of course, the news was about the attacks. I went downstairs and turned on the TV, telling my wife what had happened. As I watched a tape of the towers falling, I said, "We're at war."
Living in Memphis, home to FedEx, we have a lot of air traffic. (Memphis is the busiest cargo airport in the world.) The silence from no planes passing by overhead was eerie. You get where you don't really notice the FedEx planes most of the time, but their absence was very noticeable. We went to Wal-Mart that afternoon and while we were on the parking lot, a large, unmarked, white jet passed overhead -- undoubtedly military. Everyone on the parking lot stopped and looked up, watching the plane until it went out of sight. No one said a word.
Posted by: GL | Sep 11, 2007 5:10:53 PM
“TUAD, while I honor the courage of the American soldiers in Iraq, I cannot understand their work as a defense of freedom.” - Reid
Leaving aside the contentious issue of Iraq (per Jim Kushiner’s request), I too join in praise for Stuart’s post, and would add only one comment. Reid has a slight (very slight) point in raising the issue of whether the battle we find ourselves in, post 9/11, is one “for freedom.” I really prefer the Reagan-esque phrase: “To battle evil.” I don’t disparage freedom, but the real struggle is to destroy a great evil. Freedom is a double-edged sword: some will use their freedom frivolously (or worse), but by calling evil what it is, we speak truth. And we will stop the mouths of those who “cannot understand [our armed forces’] work as a defense of freedom.”
Posted by: Bill R | Sep 11, 2007 5:16:12 PM
"I really prefer the Reagan-esque phrase: “To battle evil.”"
I hear ya' Bill R. Yet you'd readily acknowledge that there are many secular liberals who are moral relativists. That being the case they'd vehemently protest the labeling of other non-American countries as "evil". You'd be accused of being a militaristic, hawkish, blood-thirsty jingoist.
If I recall, President Reagan took a lot of criticism for calling the USSR "evil".
Transposing the power of the words "freedom" and "evil" to another conflict: The Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The Israelis can't say they're fighting Islamic evil without being utterly excoriated by the world's media. They *HAVE* to frame it in terms of its nation's freedom.
The insidiously sad reality is that Politically Correct secular liberalism has robbed us of our dutiful right to call evil, evil. We have to play linguistic word games. Much like how Professor Esolen likes to lament the passing away of our childhood leisure, I lament the passing away of our national, state, local, neighborhood, industrial, university, ecclesiastical, and familial *resolve* to do the "heavy lifting" that's needed for our individual and corporate health. And sometimes that "heavy lifting" requires us to be linguistically and morally honest in calling evil, evil.
With major respect to all the positive societal gains from 1960's feminist liberation movement, I would cautiously, perhaps even timidly, hypothesize that the pendulum has swung way too far and our culture has become too feminized.
Heh, Heh, according to secular liberals I am probably guilty of blasphemy for that last hypothesis. So I now throw myself on the mercy of the court for being charged as a patriarchal, misogynist, male chauvinist pig.
;-)
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 5:48:47 PM
"So I now throw myself on the mercy of the court for being charged as a patriarchal, misogynist, male chauvinist pig."
In these parts, them's terms of honor.
Posted by: Bill R | Sep 11, 2007 5:55:56 PM
TUAD, Israel fights for its existence, plain and simple. It is full of leftists who have as much trouble as any American university professor uttering the word "evil." But even most leftists there understand that Israel's enemies wish to wipe it out. Unfortunately, their moral shilly-shallying, along with a constant drumbeat of condemnation from everywhere in the world, has weakened the will and confused the minds of too many within Israel.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 11, 2007 8:36:00 PM
I was in Bar Harbor, Maine, on the way home from vacation in Canada with my family. We has finished breakfast and were loading up the car to drive to the Portland airport to fly home when my little sister took my mom into the motel's gift shop to show her something and they saw the attacks on tv. They came and told us what had happened-or rather my mom did, my sister who was 6 at the time didn't grasp what was going on. My first thought was that it had to be terrorists or something and how could it possibly be real, beyond that all I really remember is how beautiful the weather was that day, the feeling of relief when we found out that my aunt who lives in Manhattan was in Connceticut all day, and the nightmarishness of the 13-hour drive home. I was only 12 at the time and a pretty sheltered child, so my whole secure little world was turned on its head that day.
Posted by: Luthien | Sep 11, 2007 8:46:14 PM
>>I was only 12 at the time and a pretty sheltered child, so my whole secure little world was turned on its head that day.<<
I know exactly what you mean.
There are individual moments in every generation that seem to strip a culture of its innocence, expose them to how broken the world is, shaping history in subtle--and profound--ways. For the the roaring 20's, it was the Crash; for the Depression kids, it was Pearl Harbor; for the boomers it was the JFK assassination; for the flower children (at least, the children of that era, not the actual hippies), it was Watergate; for us it was 9/11.
I live on the west coast, and I woke up around 7:30, as usual, to go to school...and my mom had the TV on, which seemed odd because she'd normally be in the kitchen being, well, motherly and fixing breakfast or packing me lunch. But she was watching TV, a look of strange curiosity on her face. I asked what happened, and she told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I thought she meant something like a Cessna, and I sat down to watch with her right as the second plane struck.
I didn't get it; I mean, I knew it was a terrorist attack of some sort, what with both buildings getting hit, that's not coincidence. But she was crying. She grew up on the Jersey shore, and saw the WTC go up in a matter of years out her bedroom window. And she watched it collapse on her TV in a matter of seconds.
And yet I went to school, and it was all anyone talking about. It's a day I won't soon forget.
Posted by: Michael | Sep 11, 2007 9:05:17 PM
There was a bit of panic in these parts on 9/11, because the first news stations to report on United 93 said it crashed "east of Pittsburgh," a rather loose geographical fix encompassing several counties, including my area. That one line created a small uproar in the community, as people raced around to collect their children, or do other tasks that seemed urgent to them.
The day after, September 12, 2001, I was talking with my secretary about the politics of at all. With some satisfaction I recall telling her: "A war of sorts has been started, and it'll lead to Iraq. It doesn't matter if the Iraqis had anything to do with it. Now we'll have to shuffle the deck in the Middle East, and the only obvious way to do that is to invade Iraq."
Posted by: DGP | Sep 11, 2007 9:10:07 PM
>>> The day after, September 12, 2001, I was talking with my secretary about the politics of at all. With some satisfaction I recall telling her: "A war of sorts has been started, and it'll lead to Iraq. It doesn't matter if the Iraqis had anything to do with it. Now we'll have to shuffle the deck in the Middle East, and the only obvious way to do that is to invade Iraq." <<<
I was going to write, "Scarily Prophetic!!" But I changed my mind. Because President Bush gave Saddam Hussein plenty of opportunities to come clean. And if Saddam had come clean, then there wouldn't have been an invasion. And so your prediction would not have turned out.
Posted by: Truth Unites...and Divides | Sep 11, 2007 11:27:34 PM
I was giving a lecture at the University of Toronto. I almost arrived late (I was new to the city) and I didn't realize what had happened until I came out of my classroom and saw that students had set up a TV in the lobby of my building. Most of them were crying or just staring at it dumbstruck.
Later, the anti-Americanism started percolating through the media. I'll never forget hearing Sunera Thobani explaining, on the CBC, how America had it coming, how America was the world's most dangerous terrorist state. In the following weeks, many of my now-former friends and colleagues said the same thing.
This shook me out of my soft-leftism. I was already getting pulled into the Christian orbit, and soon I found an Orthodox mission and began the long process of catechism, which culminated in my reception into the church in March of this year. I moved to America and changed my career and started a family. It was a life-changing experience because it forced me to "pick a side."
Thanks for listening.
Posted by: cantemir | Sep 12, 2007 9:02:19 AM
I realize that the war in Iraq is a contentious and emotional topic, and I should, perhaps, have been more careful in my wording. I was truly not trying to address the question of whether the war in Iraq is just or unjust, wise or foolish. I am not well-enough informed about the war even to hold an opinion in this regard. In particular I was not advancing a general principle that a sinful nation can never justly wage war. My comment about it not being a war to defend freedom was not meant to condemn the war or to impugn the motives of the soldiers who fight in it. I intended no stunts, no grandstanding, no preening. The criticisms raised against my judgment and character are likely true, for as a fallen man I find it hard to see and judge myself accurately (i.e., as the Lord would). But what I wrote, I wrote sincerely, intending it as a sober comment for the promotion of edifying discussion among fellow believers. I apologize for writing so clumsily, and in a fashion so thoroughly oblivious to my readers' sensibilities that they found it natural to read so many unintended meanings into my words. Please do not take it amiss if I try to explain myself a bit.
A man set on by a mugger will, if not taken by total surprise, recognize his danger and act to defend himself. A man set on by an adulteress, whose lips drip with honey, far from recognizing his danger, may think himself to be receiving a great benefit. The mugger endangers a man's wealth and his life. The adulteress endangers his soul. The mugger works by violence. The adulteress works by enchantment and delusion. A man succumbing to the mugger welcomes those who would help him. A man succumbing to the adulteress is hostile to those who would help him, for she makes him feel noble for destroying himself and his family. A man congratulates himself for defeating the mugger. A man congratulates himself for being defeated by the adulteress. All things considered, the adulteress is the greater danger.
I wrote my original post in an attempt to say that our heightened awareness of the threat of the mugger seems to dull our awareness of the threat of the adulteress. I was, in my own clumsy way, trying to say what I read in John Chrysostom, that no one can harm the man who does not harm himself, that the only real enemy to fear is sin. The danger of being a victim of mass murder is one to take seriously, but far worse is the guilt of commiting mass murder. We have some appreciation of the vile wickedness of the roughly 3000 murders on 9/11/01, for they were committed in broad daylight against our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, and friends. We grieve those deaths because we knew the people. Let that then help us appreciate the much greater wickedness of the roughly 48 million murders since January 22, 1973, committed in private against those who would have been our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, and friends. Those deaths are hard to grieve, for we never knew the people. America has committed greater violence than its enemies. Perhaps its enemies, given the chance, would do far worse, but this only God knows. (Again I am not even vaguely addressing whether it is right to fight the enemies -- that question is a different one entirely).
"To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' They answered him, 'We are Abraham's descendents and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?' Jesus replied, 'I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ...If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know you are Abraham's descendents. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. ..." (John 8:31-37 NIV) Our Lord offered genuine freedom to those who had believed Him. They, however, were content with the freedom they imagined themselves already to have. They were incensed and ready to kill our Lord for suggesting that they were not free. I fear that we who have believed Him face a similar danger, namely of being so enchanted with what America calls freedom that it clouds our vision, blinding us to the real freedom (i.e., freedom from sin) that Christ offers, making us similarly hostile toward those who suggest our need for it.
Mr. Kushiner, I apologize to you if I have intruded too clumsily on a topic that you intended for other purposes. I debated with myself at some length whether I would best honor your wishes by remaining silent or by explaining what my original intent was. As others here have pointed out, my judgment is often poor, so I am sorry if I chose wrongly. I will, at least, drop the topic after making this post.
Posted by: Reid | Sep 12, 2007 9:38:32 AM
That's a great story, Cantemir. 9/11 seems to have separated out those who were leftist more by habit than by inclination from those who are viscerally anti-American living in a world of unreality.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Sep 12, 2007 9:40:30 AM
Cantemir,
That is beautiful. God has certainly used this tragedy to bless you. May He continue to do so.
Posted by: GL | Sep 12, 2007 9:43:22 AM
>>And if Saddam had come clean, then there wouldn't have been an invasion.<<
That was never in the cards, by my reckoning. But in strict logic, given a supposition counter to fact, you can prove anything, so you are at least tautologically correct.
Posted by: DGP | Sep 12, 2007 9:54:14 AM
Judy & GL,
Thanks. The longer I thought about my ex-colleagues' reactions to 9/11, the more it disturbed me. These brainy PhD's had just cheered the murders, if not of their friends and relatives, at least of their classmates, their mortgage brokers, etc., not to mention hundreds if not thousands of janitors, coffee service deliverymen, electricians, etc. I just don't see how you can feel Schadenfreude at the murder of an electrician, whatever your politics.
Everyone knows Dostoevsky's line about "loving humanity more and more," and I decided to start loving people instead of "humanity," which was of course a monster that I had created in my own mind rather than anything real.
Posted by: cantemir | Sep 12, 2007 11:17:49 AM
"The danger of being a victim of mass murder is one to take seriously, but far worse is the guilt of commiting mass murder."
Reid, thanks for your post that shows that you are not as "clumsy" as you first appeared.
The very small difficulty for me is the logic used in your broad brush stroke to exhort fellow Touchstone Christians as in the statement above.
(1) Christians are not wanting to be victims of mass murder nor perpetrators of mass murder. These are two false extremes.
(2) The vast majority of Christians do not support abortion. The logical link or chain that you're attempting to establish between legalized abortion and the War on Terror is tenuous at best.
(3) Many Christians are actually working quite diligently on both fronts simultaneously. Working to reduce/eliminate the number of abortions AND working to combat the evil of terrorism.
P.S. BTW, the example that I like to give (which I adapted from Peter Kreeft) is:
"I'd rather my children be victim of terrorists than to be a terrorist themselves."
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Sep 12, 2007 1:39:15 PM
>>>P.S. BTW, the example that I like to give (which I adapted from Peter Kreeft) is:
"I'd rather my children be victim of terrorists than to be a terrorist themselves."<<<
There is also this aphorism, attributed to David Ben Gurion: "it is good to hope for a Middle East without war. It is also important to ensure that we will still be in it".
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 12, 2007 1:49:43 PM
The following exchange of e-mails between a close friend of mine, and his son, a member of the U.S. Army Rangers on his fifth deployment to a war zone (three to Afghanistan, two to Iraq), captures well the spirit of the American fighting man and his family:
SEPTEMBER 11, 2007; SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATTACK BY AL QUIDA ON THE UNITED STATES
AN EXCHANGE OF EMAILS WITH A SON IN COMBAT
IAN,
STANDING HERE, THINKING, ON THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SURPRISE TERRORIST ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THAT KILLED 2,988 OF OUR FOLLOW CITIZENS, VISITORS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WHO WERE SIMPLY GOING ABOUT THEIR DAILY LIVES.
THEN, THINKING ABOUT THE THOUSANDS OF OUR WARRIORS, LIKE YOU AND YOUR FELLOW RANGERS, WHO HAVE FOUGHT EVERY MINUTE YOU'RE DEPLOYED, IN THE HARSH, DANGEROUS CONFLICT THIS NATION HAS BEEN FORCED TO CONDUCT.
YOU ARE DOING A CRITICAL JOB FOR OUR COUNTRY AND ALL OF OUR PEOPLE, A CRITICAL JOB FOR ALL FREE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.
THE PEOPLE; THOSE WHO LIVE IN LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND UNDER THE RULE OF LAW ...
------MAY NOT UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING IN THEIR INTEREST;
------MAY NOT KNOW HOW ESSENTIAL IS YOUR DAILY WILLINGNESS TO FACE AN ENEMY THAT ATTACKS THE INNOCENT WITH NO LIMITS IN VIOLENCE;
------MAY NOT SHOW THE APPRECIATION YOU AND YOUR COMRADES HAVE EARNED AND SO JUSTLY DESERVE.
THE PEOPLE;
------ARE OFTEN SLOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOUR COMBAT AND THE IMAGES WE SEE OF IT, ARE THE EVIDENCE YOUR CHILDREN WILL USE TO EXPLAIN TO THEIRS,
HOW, AS A RESULT OF YOUR MOVING TO THE SOUND OF THE GUNS, TAKING THE FIGHT TO THE ENEMY’S GROUND, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA REMAINED A FREE AND CIVIL SOCIETY AFTER AN ATTACK BY FANATICALLY RELIGIOUS KILLERS WHO HOPED TO END OUR WAY OF LIFE.
BE CERTAIN;
THE PEOPLE WILL BE UNABLE TO AVOID ACCEPTING YOUR SUCCESS, IN TIME;
------IT WILL BE ALL AROUND THEM; ELECTIONS, DEBATES, COURTS, CONGRESSES; THE PROOF THAT YOU WERE VICTORIOUS.
------THE SEARING PRICE YOU ARE PAYING WILL BE UNDERSTOOD, EVENTUALLY;
------THE SACRIFICE OF THOSE THAT DO NOT RETURN WILL BE RECOGNIZED, EVENTUALLY;
------AS THE FREEDOMS THAT REMAIN OUR GREAT NATIONAL LUXURY WILL CONTINUE........... ONLY BECAUSE OF THE DETERMINATION AND TENACITY OF WARRIORS LIKE YOU.
PLEASE ACCEPT, AND CONVEY TO ALL YOUR COMRADES, MY DEEPEST APPRECIATION.
LOVE,
DAD
Dad, 9/11/07
Thank you for the support that you have given the men and women that
Serve, and the families that sacrifice so much in order to answer the
Call.
I hope you don't mind, but I forwarded your email to Jen, she
needs to hear things like that as well.
I am sure it comes as no surprise to you that you are the only one who took
the time to send a Message to "the boys" and me on the day that
kicked the continued "Vacations" off.
Please take pleasure in knowing that we are indeed
continuing to send our reply to those that invited us on these pleasant
Vacation trips.
I shared your message with “the boys” and they wanted me
to thank you for your support.
Love
Ian
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 12, 2007 2:59:54 PM
I was working on my doctoral thesis upstairs in our house on Little Cranberry Island (near Bar Harbor where Luthien was) when my father told me that a plane had hit one of the towers. I went down and we watched everything on TV.
After the second tower fell I had to go outside and think. I remember the first person I saw was a theologically conservative but politically liberal Christian friend who commented that it makes you wonder what we had done to make people hate us so. That made me wonder how some can be so alienated from their own country that honest Patriotic solidairty is beyond them.
I'm seeing a lot of that these days.
Posted by: Christopher Hathaway | Sep 12, 2007 6:07:11 PM
>>I am sure it comes as no surprise to you that you are the only one who took the time to send a Message to "the boys" and me on the day that kicked the continued "Vacations" off.<<
How sad! I always imagined that soldiers usually have numerous family members and friends to offer personal support. Perhaps that's less often true than I thought.
Posted by: DGP | Sep 12, 2007 8:24:04 PM
>>>How sad! I always imagined that soldiers usually have numerous family members and friends to offer personal support. Perhaps that's less often true than I thought.<<<
Ian and "The Boys" are taking their "vacation" up in the Hindu Kush. The team consists of thirty Rangers, twenty SEALS, two FBI agents and a couple of guys from an OGA ("Other Government Agency"). Their communications with the outside world are somewhat tenuous. Every day, day after day, they go out into the wild hunting very bad men. More often than not, they catch them. But there is a price. On the last tour, Ian lost two members of his team. In that part of Afghanistan, it's usually not IEDs or mines, but snipers.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Sep 12, 2007 8:29:40 PM
>>The team consists of thirty Rangers, twenty SEALS, two FBI agents and a couple of guys from an OGA ("Other Government Agency").<<
Yikes. If you have many friends like this -- remind me always to speak politely to you.
>>On the last tour, Ian lost two members of his team.<<
May they rest in peace, and may God reward them for their chivalry.
Posted by: DGP | Sep 12, 2007 8:34:19 PM
It makes no matter where I was or what I was doing. All I remember is the tears streaming down my face as I watched in abject horror a second plane flying into a building.
Now I remember the number of men and women who are "in the sandbox." May God protect them physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Posted by: Athanasia | Sep 12, 2007 9:32:27 PM
We were living in England at the time. We didn't have a television (still don't -- the habit of refusing to pay for a license to watch Teletubbies persists, even when we don't have to have a license any more), and I was sitting at my desk working when my husband came home from someplace and said that he had heard that some terrorists had hijacked airplanes and flown them into the World Trade Center.
"You're kidding," I think I actually said. On my desk was a note I'd just gotten in that day's mail from the editor of a poetry magazine in New York, and I remember looking at it and thinking, "Are those people all all right? Are they even still there?"
Later, walking across town to church to pray, I ran into another American friend of ours, and we exchanged a few words about what had happened. I had not been homesick for two minutes up to that point -- we loved being strangers in a strange land -- but just then it was so good to speak to another American, even if all we could say to each other, really, was that we had no idea what was going to happen to the world, and we were scared. Mainly we were thinking, "What if we can't get back home - ever?"
It's easy to forget -- for me, anyway -- how uncertain that time felt, and how we really expected everyday life to change significantly. Were planes going to fly again? Were interstates going to be guarded,and state borders patrolled? No more trash cans in public places (an inevitable thought after spending lots of time in British train stations)? Writing this, I'm taken aback at how easy it is to think of this event as having taken place much longer ago than it did.
Meanwhile, in England where we were, things felt strange in their own way. Our oldest daughter attended a school which was roughly a third Bangladeshi Muslim; she was the only American, and everyone in the school knew her. We had seen the newspaper photos of Pakistani schoolchildren in London cheering the 9/11 attacks, and we had read every Muslim-extremist statement which had been printed -- it took the papers about two weeks to come up with anything like a moderate voice which didn't confirm that yes, indeedy, America had had it coming -- and we really, truly wondered what was being said in the mosque in Cambridge, and what the climate at school was going to be like.
In hindsight this all seems kind of silly and paranoid, but at the time it was hard to walk down the street and not expect a van to blow up -- or something. Of course it didn't -- nothing more happened while we were there, at any rate. The Muslim kids in our daughter's class went on being friendly to her in school, and vice versa, though there was never any question of any social intercourse outside school. The Atlantic went on being traversible -- my husband flew from Cambridge to Memphis less than two weeks after the attacks, in fact, to help his mother move. And of course we did get back, and here we are.
One image which stays with me: people standing around outside a shop window full of televisions, watching the plane fly into the building, over and over and over . . .
Posted by: Sally | Sep 12, 2007 11:36:51 PM
Incidentally, I'm not trying to laugh off the things that have happened in the wake of 9/11 -- the world certainly changed for my cousin currently serving in Iraq, for example. I only meant that despite my fervid apocalyptic imaginings, the world did go on.
Posted by: Sally | Sep 12, 2007 11:51:52 PM
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