When I got home from work that day and for many days afterward I received a drove of email graphics and messages sent by friends from all over the country. The following article was one such email message I received. I loved it so much, I thought I'd reprint it here.
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.
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.
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.
Subject: Fw: Miami Herald News Article
by Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald
