September 11th

Seven years ago this morning, the Twin Towers came down and a plane flew into the Pentagon. It was a surreal morning. I thought the person who first told me was joking.

In the days that followed I think everyone was paranoid that there were Islamic terrorist cells all over the country about to launch attacks everywhere. The then mayor of Marion had cement baracades put around the courthouse to keep them from launching an attack.

It was a great tragedy. A couple thousand people died for no reason, a little man taking out his frustration for the fact that his understanding of religion was not in power in the world.

Today we remember them and their deaths. They were people like you and me, at the wrong time and the wrong place. They were like the much larger numbers in Rwanda or Darfur or Serbia or the Holocaust who were killed because they were from the wrong race, for no valid reason. They were like the much larger numbers of innocent civilians in Iraq who have been caught in the civil war that followed the dethroning of Saddam Hussein, killed either in the cross-fire or because they were the wrong ethnic group, for no valid reason.

We have not let them die in vain if we value those innocents around the world who face similar death and oppression for no reason, if we are their friend to the degree we are able.

The Twin Towers are a reminder that the United States is not invincible, that we can bleed. And the time since has taught us that no amount of force we can muster can stamp out this particular kind of enemy. We are not all powerful. We need others, other nations and we need to convince those in the middle that we are more worthy than our enemies.

The days after 9-11 were a very rare opportunity for the world to look at itself and become a better place. For a brief moment in time, we had the world's ears and sympathies. It is not too late for us to find in this memory a vision for a better world and a bigger world.

The virtuous response is not a retreat into nationalism or a quest for vengeance. I am not saying that we should not seek to bring the perpetrators to justice. What I am saying is that our response should be to identify with all the innocent in the world who suffer at the hands of the evil and the misguided and not think that, in God's eyes, an American death is more atrocious than a child killed in the jungles of Africa for his kidney.

And it is more important for us to keep today's children in the world from becoming tomorrow like those who act against the innocent than it is to kill the terrorists themselves. It is more important to change those who can be changed and influence those who can be influenced than to kill those who can't in the name of vengeance. Then maybe tomorrow, we won't have anything to seek vengeance for--our friends will stop these sorts of enemies for us before they even reach our borders.