The Barbarians Will Learn What America's All About
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Syndicated columnist
"They pay me to tease shades of
meaning from social and cultural issues, 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, cultural, 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 its 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, indeed, 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 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, there is steel beneath this velvet.
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.
Still, I keep wondering what it was 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
about. You don't know what you just started.
But you're about to learn.
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