As you know, I normally send political updates to you.  However, I do not
believe that is the best message I can deliver today.  Instead I am
forwarding two messages.  The first is from a Toronto television journalist
editorial as printed in a Canadian newspaper.  Several of you have probably
read it but for those that haven't it is worth reading.  The second is a
column by Leonard Pitts who writes for the Miami Herald.  It articulates as
well as anything I have read/heard on the current crisis.

Message # 1

America: The Good Neighbor.

 From Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television Commentator. What
follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the
Congressional Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most
generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of
the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying
even the interest on its remaining debts to the United
States.

When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who
propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the
streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in
to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes.
Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of
dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are
writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the
erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other
country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why
do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does
no other land on earth even
>consider putting a man or woman on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about
German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American
technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times -
and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store
window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued
and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are
breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home
to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through
age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad
and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both
are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other
people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to
the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during
the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired
of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with
their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at
the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of those."  Stand proud, America! Wear it proudly!!

I would hope that each of you would send this to as many people as you can
and emphasize that they should send it to as many of their friends until
this letter is sent to every person on the web.

Message #2

Leonard Pitts Column From the Miami Herald
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001

We'll go forward from this moment.

It's my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help
make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this
moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only
thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed
to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World
Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn?
Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect
your cause? You just damned  your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You
just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart?
You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family,
a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family
nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional
energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's
misfortune, a cartoon mouse.

We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and
material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a
certain sense of blithe entitlement.

We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate.
We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the
overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving
God.

Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak.
You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot
be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN  Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock.
We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still
working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from
some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy
novel.

Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final
death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of
terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of
the world.

You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But, there's a
gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the
lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us
this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain.

When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When
provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any
cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without
fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not.

What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the
future. In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation,
fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what
can be done to prevent it from happening again.

There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic
freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad.
But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US.  You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent.
That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know
us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.  As Americans
we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in
defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that
maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the
case, consider the message received.

And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know
what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.