To prepare for this morning's talk, I assembled some newspaper clips, notes and two back issues of Prime Time - the October and November 2001 issues.
I didn't get to use them, but after re-reading what I wrote three weeks after 9/11, I decided to post it here.
Tell me what you think, please.
After September 11
(italics) At the Mayoral forum, I manage not to cry when we sing the national anthem. but I want to. As the horror recedes, the warmth of national unity fills the vessel, a warmth I haven't felt in years. It feels good.
(end italics)
And I fear it.
War simplifies, wipes out doubts, fills us with certainty and passion.
That's why folks my age look back to World War II with such nostalgia.
But 60 years have passed and surely, we have learned what Samuel Johnson knew in 1775. "Patriotism," he said,"is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
o On Sept. 14, the Paragon Foundation in Alamogordo - an anti-environmentalism outfit - emails me. To better fight terrorism, we must rescind or suspend the endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.
I wonder, how low can you get?
o Jerry Falwell responds to terrorism: "The pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians...the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
Thanks, Jerry. Now I know how low one can get.
o UNM Regent Richard Toliver and State Reps. Willaim Fuller, Rob Burpo and Marsha Atkin demand the resignation of UNM Professor Richard Berthold. He made a sick joke about the Pentagon and admits it was stupid.
If a University regent doesn't know what separates the US from, say, the Taliban...ah, forget it.
I wonder if Dr. Johnson also knew that in war the injured party comes to resemble the hated enemy. Remember how we fought Nazi racism by interning yellow people? Remember how our struggle against lawless Communism produced McCarthyism and later, that assault on our fundmental law called Watergate?
(italics) I walk in the neighborhood and two veterans shake their heads at the prospect of war. Still, the President makes a good speech and the unity feels warm. (end italics)
My email turns into a town meeting: Some writers flex their muscles, but don't explain how bombs will end terrorism. Nor do they give me confidence war won't worsen Middle Eastern tensions. The pacifists are right about perpetuating cycles of hate, but they don't tell me how sweetness will persuade terrorists to stop.
I begin to think we must use force, but oh-so-carefully, and only after we build policy.
(italics) When the curtain falls on ALT's Broadway musical, they have us sing "God Bless America." The lady at my left puts her hand in mine and I tear up. (end italics)
It's not 1941, I remind myself. Pearl Harbor is the past. Back then, life and death were simpler.
That was it. Boy, that Dr. Johnson knew his stuff, didn't he?