09.15.01

Dear Lenny,

Thanks for the rant. I've been dealing with this terrible attack pretty much alone too. I was watching the news, curling my hair, Tuesday morning while this unfolded. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. Shock, disbelief, gut-wrenching feelings interspersed later with numbness. My students and I were glued to the TV most of the day. We were also on the internet and looking up stuff in history books and the encyclopedia - trying to get a grip. Tuesday after school one of my l8 year old students, (( )), went to a recruiting office and joined the army. He qualified for the airforce, but he said he wanted to kill "them" in person. Wednesday night I drank most of a bottle of wine and dissolved into tears and finally bed. I remember my father telling me about being in the Navy before WWII. His ship, the Arizona, is one of ships at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. I remember the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice when he told me about it. In the Navy he rose to some rank in intelligence operations. During WWII he went back in and "disappeared " into the war for a long period, ~2 years. [Mom] didn't hear from him and he never said where he was or what he did during that time. I was raised by two staunchly patriotic people. I also went the other way during my political coming of age, not wrongly I think. Vietnam wasn't WWII. Our motives may not have been the best. And the cost was, in my mind, excessive. Vietnam taught me that if we are going to do something, do it fully committed, with all our might.

On balance I hope that thinking people will realize the fertile soil this hatred has grown in. We have supported Israel without regard to the just claims of the Palestinians. We have let our market, profit driven version of capitalism impoverish many millions in the world and that is deeply resented. I think it is instructive that the targets of Tuesdays attacks were the financial and military symbols of U.S. (Western) power, not the Lincoln Monument or the Statue of Liberty. Having said that I do believe we are now at war and must take up our weapons and resolve to do what we have to do. Part of the reason this even happened was that in the past decade terrorist attacks have been treated as individual criminal acts. Our national priorities and those of the civilized world must be directed toward justice, both in the punitive sense for this attack and in the long range sense toward economic justice in the world.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

-- SS