Last updated on 11/01/01.
Although it Hurts, Please Show Us the Film Again
We Need to See it
Anderson, Ken (Wednesday, October 31, 2001 05:09:19)
As has been stated, accurately, so many times, every one of us remembers where we were and what we were doing on the morning of September 11th. This is so firmly linked to our personal histories that we might as easily forget our birthdays, or the name of our home town. My wife was at a Bible study, and I was in the office, alone, watching a Little House on the Prairie rerun. I may never remember what the episode was about, however. That information was pushed out the moment my wife's daughter called, and told me to change the channel.
The rest of September 11th is a blur. It took awhile before the enormity of the horror sunk in, but only a couple of weeks ago, I would have thought that I would always remember how I felt on September 12th. One day after the planes came crashing down into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and onto the field in Pennsylvania; by the day after our nation was so horribly attacked; on September 12th, I felt a resolve that I thought would remain with me forever. A combination of emotions, some of them previously unexperienced, led me to a realization that we were at war. Even before I heard my President use the words, I understood the reality. I knew, on September 12th, that the only alternative to war was surrender. One day afer the war began, everyone I spoke to knew this. Everyone I heard on television, on the radio, and in the newspapers, understood this.
As I write these words on October 31st, a little more than 6 weeks later, it is not as clear as it was on September 12th. A month and a half later, most of us realize that we are at war. They tell us that on TV. At the end of the month following September 11th, many of us no longer want to be at war. We would like to go back to where we were on September 10th, when our biggest fear was of sharks in the ocean; when we could believe that, so long as we stayed out of the ocean, we would be safe. We would like to look forward to trick or treating with our children. We would like to begin planning for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, and for a New Year that might be better than the last.
We want things to go back to normal. We're seeing this already in the whimpers of just a few of our politicians. Soon it will become an uproar. We are not a brutal people, and war is not our natural state. We're seeing this expressed in the streets throughout our land, first in groups of fifty or a hundred, made larger by a media starved for controversy, and now we're seeing it by the thousands. We don't want to be at war. We are not a vicious people.
When we see the pictures of children lying dead in the streets of Afghanistan, victims of U.S. bombs that cannot tell the difference between a child and a Taliban warrior, we want it to end. When we read of the devastation visited upon the innocent population of Afghanistan by U.S. air raids, we, some of us, begin to feel as if we are the bad guys. When we hear of families torn apart by war, we are led to believe that we are the aggressors, and some of us accept this.
We Americans are a peaceful people, and we want so badly for others to see this. We want this war to end. Most of us still understand that we are at war, but many of us no longer feel as we did on September 12th. We see this on the streets. We read it in the newspaper columns, and in letters to the editor. We hear it increasingly from our politicians. Fueled by a media which, despite its flag lapels, would rather have a story than a victory, we are slowly being led to believe that the only victims are in Afghanistan.
There are other pictures we haven't seen, scenes that were believed to be too horrible for us to view, but which are seen yet, day after day, by those who are yet digging in the rubble that once was the World Trade Center. There are stories we'll never read because no one would be so insensitive as to write or to publish them, tales that will not be heard because their authors did not survive to tell them.
The pictures we have seen are fading in our memories, as are the emotions that resulted from them. You might insist otherwise, but do you truly feel the same resolve you felt so clearly on September 12th? Many of us don't. Fueled by media publicity, anti-war sentiment is growing. Aid agencies, stirred to action perhaps for all of the right reasons, are already using the money for other purposes, even while many of survivors are yet so very much in need. We are seeing a return of partisan politics, and declining support for the war effort, as politicians look for an edge. Among the general population, resolve is slowly giving way to fear and doubt.
Yet we are still at war, and if we are to win this war, we need to see the pictures again. As painful as it may be, we need to watch the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. We need to see the devastation at the Pentagon, and what little was left of the plane that was crashed in Pennsylvania. We need to hear our stories, to help us to remember that we are not the aggressors, but the victims of this war. We need to regain the understanding that was so clear to us six weeks ago, that the only alternative to this war is surrender.
Yes, we are in danger, and we have every reason to be fearful. Yet we shouldn't forget that we were in danger on September 10th, long before we dropped the first bomb in Afghanistan, only we didn't know it at the time. The alternative to this war is not peace, but surrender. And surrender will bring only more devastation.
We need to see the pictures again, perhaps even the ones we've never seen. We need to be reminded that the true victims of this war are not the ones that we've been hearing about on television over the past couple of weeks, but the ones we saw on the morning of September 11th. We are the victims of this war, not the aggressors. We didn't start this war, and we may not want this war, but a peaceful resolution can be found, not in surrender, but in victory.
We need our resolve back. If this means that we must see the pictures again, bring them on.
Ken Anderson
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