Remembrance

I missed the anointing this past Thursday. Like a lot of Kansans I was watching Seinfeld reruns. Given a choice between crass comedy and crass politics, Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer seemed to be better viewing than the display in Boston.

Yesterday I finally decided that, in order to be a good citizen, I needed to find out what Senator Kerry had to say. So, I read the transcript of his acceptance speech on the DNC web page. There were two things that struck a cord with me. The first was his remembrance of the state of our Union after the September 11 attacks. The second was his brief outline of a Kerry administration’s “use of force” doctrine.

I’ll cover remembrance in this essay and the “use of force” doctrine in a subsequent essay.

There was a ring of truth in what he had to say about unity:

“Remember the hours after September 11th, when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran up the stairs and risked their lives, so that others might live. When rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon. When the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol. When flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.”

There was a brief moment of national unity. But it was all too brief. The weeds of discontent that we thought had died in a blaze of national unity on September 11 had only been dormant

I can’t say when it all started. The discord was sown subtly, slowly, and, for the most part, unintentionally. Once sown, the weeds dug in and the discontent spread. There were shades and variations. In some parts of the country it resembled chickweed. In others it took the form of pigweed.

Then it was caught up in the currents of our time.

In their subtlest and most insidious form these weeds of discord destroyed our collective memory of what had happened that day. We forgot the victims and began to search for reasons for the brutality of the attack. Introspection replaced resolve. What had we done?

Here in Emporia the local newspaper, in its editorial work, began to ask questions about causes. Was it our wealth? The answer seemed clear. Our consumer society was now paying the price for its arrogance. We had also become a nation consumed by anger, they concluded. We needed to collectively repent and move on. Political voices chimed in. One politician addressed a high school class and concluded that, while we believed that Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, others believed he was a freedom fighter, fighting against American imperialism.

My problem was that I couldn’t move on. Nor could I accept the notion that I and millions of my countrymen were responsible for the terror inflicted that day. I responded in the only way I felt I could. I tried to make my voice heard. I wrote and pleaded for remembrance. I wrote the following to Patrick Kelley, one of the Emporia Gazette’s editorial page editors:

“It’s just like you, Mr. Kelley, to get it almost all wrong (your editorial dated 9/9).

Well, Mr. Kelley, I can see right through you. I think Bob Dylan expressed my feelings best when said, “I see through your eyes and I see through your brain like I see through the water that runs down my drain.”First, you offer us trivial solutions – stop consuming and don’t be angry any more.

Mr. Kelley, my guess is that you’ve consumed a lot more than I have since last September. So, spare me you’re your self-righteous “insight.” As for anger, I think I’ll maintain mine, thank you. In fact, I happen to think it’s justified. I happen to think it’s a righteous anger.Second you decry any response that you see as “jingoistic.” That is, don’t be too patriotic, don’t be too devoted to “national interests,” and don’t be too belligerent.Mr. Kelley, my patriotism isn’t blind. In fact, my eyes are wide open. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ll paraphrase it from Sweeney Todd for you – “there are demons lurkin’ about.” And, those demons are in Baghdad or a cave in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, not Washington, D.C.

As for being too nationalistic, I can tell you what I was doing on September 11th and the days after that last year. I was shedding tears with Americans of all stripes – Native Americans, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists. I cried with gays and straights. I cried with Republicans, Democrats, Independents.

One of the enduring memories for me of those days will be a train ride my wife and I took to the Grand Canyon. It was September 14th. As the train rolled along, my wife and I sang the anthem “This Land is Your Land” and other uniquely American standards through our tears with Americans from New Jersey and Michigan and Nevada, folks we’d never met before and will probably never see again. I remember how close I felt to them then. I see, even now, how close they still are to me.

I’ll always remember the look of horror that registered on the President’s face when the news of the attack was relayed to him. Do you remember what he was doing that day, Mr. Kelley? He was reading to schoolchildren in Florida, African-American children, Hispanic children, Caucasian children, children who reflected our “national” diversity and goodness.

I’ll always remember a conversation that I had near the end of September with a very close Muslim friend from New Jersey. He confided in me that he feared a backlash against Muslims in America. I remember crying then, too, as we shared our late nineties experiences together in what we called our little marketplace of ideas, he as a devout Muslim and me as an Evangelical Christian. I told him that he and his family would be safe anywhere in America, but that if he felt the need for safety that he could come to stay with us in Emporia, Kansas. I told him that, while our theology diverged, our humanity converged and I told him that the overwhelming majority of Americans respected his right to believe as a Muslim and would defend that right to the death (I even now remain convinced that being a Muslim in America is safer than being a Muslim in Baghdad now or was in Taliban ruled Afghanistan). I told him that our national response would be sure and just. I still believe that today. I think our administration believes that too. I believe they’ll follow that course nobly.

I’ll always remember meeting Billy, a Navajo Indian guide at Monument Valley, Utah about a week after the 11th. As he drove in and out of the potholes in the valley, he told of his experience as a U.S. Marine. I remember how his face beamed when he told us of how proud he was of learning to become a Navajo medicine man. I remember as if it were a few minutes ago when he stopped and gently sang a Navajo blessing on us. I can hear his gentle voice as I now write. And, I remember our shared outrage at what had been done to our fellow citizens a few days earlier. I remember our shared conviction that the evil of the 11th could not be allowed to stand or repeated.

That may be too nationalistic for you, Mr. Kelley, but it’s not for me.

As for belligerence, I think I have that right too. Belligerence was thrust on us, not by us. I don’t know what you were doing on that morning, but I know what I was doing. My wife and I were having breakfast at a small B&B in New Mexico. At that same time, some of my fellow Americans were boarding transcontinental flights in Boston, bound for west coast meetings or a Disneyland vacation. Others were going to work at the World Trade Center. American mothers and fathers and children were probably on the Towers’ observation decks together, gazing at a great American city on a beautiful late summer day. In the eyes of Osama bin Laden those might have been, in some twisted way, belligerent acts. What’s my point? It’s this. Osama bin Laden and his minions (I include among them Saddam) probably lamented that more of us weren’t murdered that day. You see, Mr. Kelley, it wasn’t all an isolated incident to be forgotten by just getting over our anger. It was an act of war! It was an act of war against those who died and their families! It was an act of war against me! It was an act of war against my wife! It was an act of war against my children! It was an act of war against you! It was an act of war against liberty! It was an act of war against decency! It was an act of war against anything that good people in this country consider noble and just!

If all of this makes me “jingoistic,” Mr. Kelley, I accept the epithet with great pride. I’ll gladly wear that mantle. You see, I refuse to have my commitment to God and country debased. I know in my heart that I’m justified. I know because I understand the difference between good and evil. Further, I’ve probably reflected on the momentous issues laying before us as a nation far more deeply than you could ever imagine. I don’t take my responsibility as an American citizen or as a citizen of the world lightly. I’ve wrestled with the words of scripture. I’ve wrestled with the words of Aquinas and Augustine. And, I’ve come to the following conclusion. If a choice between an “evil peace” and a “just war” is thrust upon me, I will choose the latter. My firm conviction is that the President and our leaders are wrestling with issues of war and peace in much the same way.

Now, as I sit here, I think of all that’s happened in the past year and wonder how you could possibly think so little of your fellow citizens to not know that we’re well able to distinguish between righteous and unbridled anger. I wonder why you feel the need to chide us about materialism and anger, as if we were the cause of what happened. Is it contempt? Does it come from the shallowness of your own being? I honestly don’t know.

While I pray fervently that we can come to a just conclusion without war, I will not shrink from whatever responsibility is thrust upon me if it does.A year ago all I could do was cry in anguish. Today, I’m prepared to sacrifice. I also believe that millions of my countrymen are as prepared to sacrifice as I am.

A year ago, I believed the words of the prophet – “Let justice roll like might rivers.” I still believe those words today. I further believe that our national cause is just and we have responsibility before the Supreme Judge of history to ensure a just outcome to the evil that was inflicted upon us.

As you can see, Mr. Kelley, I feel very strongly about this. I haven’t just been blindly consuming this past year, nor have millions of my fellow citizens. I haven’t trivialized this monumental affront as something that just getting over our anger will solve. Neither have millions of my fellow citizens.

If all of this seems bothersome to you, Mr. Kelley, I offer a solution. It will satisfy your need as a journalist to report on evil and mine to confront it. It’ll satisfy your need to sell copy and mine to see that justice prevails. Send my letter to Osama and Saddam. Offer them an invitation on my behalf. Tell them I’ll meet them on Commercial Street or at exit 130 or maybe even somewhere out on the Flint Hills. Tell them any time of day or night will be fine. Tell them to come prepared to defend themselves (that’s more than Osama gave to thousands of my countrymen last year or Saddam gives to his countrymen today). Tell them I’ll be there armed with righteous anger and might. Tell them I’ll be there before them and the world. And, tell them, I’ll greet them with the immortal words of Rooster Cogburn, “Fill your hands, you sonsabitches.” If that’s too undignified for your tastes, you can use David’s words to Goliath and the Philistines that he would give their “carcasses to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”

I got no response.

The third anniversary of the attack is approaching, a little more than a month away now. One tyrant has been plucked from a spider hole. The other is still in hiding. The weeds of discontent have almost completely choked the unity out of our national life. A lot has changed.

Me? I haven’t.

In his autobiography, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Elie Wiesel describes a man named Moshe. His fellow villagers sometimes call him Moshe the Drunkard. They sometimes call him Moshe the madman. But when the Germans came Moshe was one of the few who sounded the warning. Wiesel’s last memory of him was as Moshe the beadle – that is the court messenger. He describes his stark message – “But Moshe the beadle is different, for he lived our destiny before any of us. Messenger of the dead, he shouted his testimony from the rooftops and delivered it in silence, but either way no one would listen. People turned their backs so as not to see his eyes, as though fearing to glimpse a truth that held his past and our future in its steely grip. People tried, in vain, to make him doubt his own reason and his own memory, to accept that he had survived for nothing – indeed, to regret having survived.”

In his acceptance speech Mr. Kerry asked us to remember.

I haven't forgottenNor will I.