Those Magnificent Towers

Those magnificent towers. The wounding of America on September 11, 2001 
was not mortal, and it is not the last wound America will suffer. But 
it was a deep wound, for it tore into buildings, shattered thousands 
of lives, instilled fear and confusion, and brought the consequences 
of unbridled hatred into the lives of every one of us. 

I was scheduled to fly to Dulles Airport on the morning after the 
attack. After conducting business near Washington, D.C., I was then 
scheduled to drive to New York state for a college reunion with 
friends in Cooperstown. I would not have had time to visit my 
favorite city during the trip. I would have had to content myself 
with still vivid memories of my visit to New York City in December 
last year with my ten year old daughter, Liz. In the months between 
those happy few winter days and the City's darkest night, Liz and 
I had often reminisced about the hospitality of the Danzas, meeting 
her pen pal in the Bronx, thrilling to a show on Broadway, our visit 
with gracious hosts in an office tower in Battery Sea Park, and so 
much more. We took photographs, and I will be forever grateful that 
I took a photograph, from the Ellis Island ferry, of those magnificent 
towers.

People have compared this wound to the attack on Pearl Harbor, so I 
put the question to my 83 year old mother. She was born in the last 
year of World War I, saw the poor beg for food during the Great 
Depression, gave birth to sons during the first and last years of 
the Korean War, suffered and recovered from polio, sat through 
endless dinner table arguments during the bitter days of Vietnam, 
and now works mightily to recover from a recent stroke. And, of 
course, she remembers Pearl Harbor. There is a difference, she 
said. After Pearl Harbor, we knew who had hit us and each of us 
knew what we had to do. For her part, she finished college, taught 
high school English for a year, then moved to lower Manhattan and 
found a job as a secretary for the British Navy. She worked in the 
Cunard Building at 25 Broadway, and struck up a storybook romance 
a few short blocks from the site of those two magnificent towers 
with the man who became my father.

My wife and I followed the advice of the professionals and developed 
a plan for helping our three children cope with the events of last 
Tuesday. We let them talk about it openly but not incessantly, we 
let them watch the news, and we reassured them that we and others 
were working very hard to keep them safe. They seemed well enough 
that first day - affected of course, but coping. That night, I walked 
into Liz's bedroom to tuck her in, and she lay under the covers, 
shaking. Something prompted me to ask, "Are you worried about the 
Danzas?" She only nodded, because she could not speak and sob at 
the same time.

Hatred is a fearsome monster. It regularly assaults every human 
heart, and it too often wins the battle. It often attacks quietly 
and insidiously. It is not just jets knifing into buildings. Hatred 
is also the doubt in my heart when I see a taxi driver or coffee 
shop patron with dark skin and broken accent. Hatred scores a 
victory when I ask silently, "Are you one of them?"


To those who hate America, those magnificent towers represented our 
excesses. The dizzy and distorted heights of wealth and power. But 
to others who know and love this country, they stood with other 
monuments on that tiny island, shining reminders that it was 
ordinary people who built and filled them and who now lie beneath 
them. To see those towers only as steel, concrete, glass, wealth 
and power is to miss the greatness of America: secretaries, middle 
managers, security guards, traders, police officers, firefighters, 
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, non-believers, wives, brothers, daughters, 
grandfathers. A chorus of many languages, colors and creeds, rising 
not like some blinding Tower of Babel but celebrating freedom like 
the nearby torch of Liberty.

America's saber will not simply rattle. It is already being drawn 
and sharpened, and it will soon be thrust at the monster of hatred 
that wounded her. The heart of the monster is too cold and too hard 
to be dealt a mortal blow, and so the monster will rear up again 
and again. As powerful as we may be, that is our fate, for like 
Achilles we cannot be entirely immersed in immortality while we 
walk this earth. And the saber will cut others who are innocent, 
as it did when we decimated our native population, interned 
Japanese-Americans in World War II, and napalmed civilians in 
Southeast Asia. But at least once before in our history we rose 
in "righteous might" and the viciousness of this latest attack 
compels us do so again. In the moment of my death, when I stand 
in judgment before God, I will offer this defense: I knew that 
violence was not the message of your Son, but when I heard the 
cries of the wounded all across this country, I did not have 
the strength to turn the other cheek and ask you simply to 
forgive those who did not know what they had done. I will then 
have to trust that God is indeed all merciful.

And so the talk turns to war. Most Americans now understand the 
need for a mighty response, but will most Americans understand 
and make the necessary sacrifices? Will we be patient for the 
time, measured not in days, weeks or months, but in years, that 
this war will take? Will we set aside other priorities, such as 
education, medicine and perhaps a missile shield, so that we can 
battle an enemy that relies on Boeings and box cutters to assault 
us? "The Greatest Generation" accepted fuel rationing - will we 
consider, for example, voluntarily replacing vehicles that 
average 10 or15 miles per gallon with those that average 25 or 
30 so that our collective jugular is not quite so exposed to 
tyrants and despots? Can we imagine more of our sons and daughters 
in combat uniforms, traversing treacherous terrain under fire, or 
receiving transfusions, or lying forever silent in graves? And do 
we understand that, despite all of those sacrifices, the monster 
of hatred may be slowed for a time, but never slain, as long as 
it is allowed to infiltrate the human heart?

America's wound is a deep one. Its measure will be taken for years 
to come in political, economic, human and spiritual terms. But the 
wounds such as this need never be mortal, unless we let them be so. 
Buildings may have fallen, but the spirit of America is rising. 
Let us remember this: America's spirit will shine and our might 
will be righteous if we strive not just to exact retribution but 
to follow, without pause, the long dark path to true peace. In 
the rubble that was once those magnificent towers, even as the 
cries of the victims are falling away, the ultimate sacrifice 
now lights our way.