Shock
As I arrived home after teaching a class last Tuesday, my wife met me at the door. “Jim, haven’t you heard? It’s a war zone in America, but The Day called to say there was an e-mail saying your son in Washington is OK.”
Unable to get much else coherent out of her, I went to the television where one channel, thank God, was broadcasting CNN, and I could hear the English original: two planes were shown over and over again crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Building. People were hanging out the windows crying for help. Then one by one the two towers collapsed on those unfortunate people. I was in shock.
I have lived and worked in both Washington and New York. I have driven by the Pentagon on my way to work countless times. I have been in the World Trade Center and cannot rid myself of the images of those elegant elevators reaching so high into the sky, the lounges at the top of the world where one could sip a drink and look down on Gotham, the city that never sleeps, and above all I cannot shake the images of those immaculate people working in all those offices, men and women working like so many bees in the hive of all that seemed bright and beautiful.
It couldn’t happen here? Pardon me, but I grew up in Oklahoma, and after the bombing in Oklahoma City I knew it could happen anywhere. I did not happen to know any of the victims, but I do know some of their relatives. If terrorism could touch my sleepy, isolated Oklahoma, it could extend its hand anywhere. But Manhattan, the Pentagon, the citadels of that wonderful world so many American generations had toiled so assiduously to build?
It all seems so senseless. Even terrorism has a logic such that the perpetrator steps forth to say, “See, I did this! look have powerful I am! You wanted to stop me, but you can’t! Now you have to deal with ME!” But when nobody steps forward to claim responsibility, terrorism loses even whatever twisted political logic it might possess and become mere murder, wanton beyond the forgiveness of God or man.
In the middle of the night I finally managed to find a Deutsche Welle broadcast in English and watched President Bush’s address. He spoke of the quiet anger all of us share. The attack was not only on the US but on Great Britain’s City of London, an attack on the world market economy, on Western civilization as such.
I heard fears from European commentators that America might overreact. In an earlier world without nuclear weapons, America would surely have gone to war over such an outrage as quickly as it once went to war over Pearl Harbor. But it is still not know against whom. To repeat, I worked in Washington, and there may be some people I know among the very many advisors, intelligence experts, and military analysts who are now undoubtedly working virtually around the clock. They will do their jobs. They are the best. When it comes, the response will be adequate.
Without doubt, the markets and the dollar will stabilize, and in a week or two the world will get back to business as usual. It always does. But the world has changed in one important respect. It has finally come home to one and all that terrorism is a danger anytime, anywhere, and this cannot and will not be tolerated. The whole world, Ukraine included, has shown America its solidarity on this one. It is appreciated.
