Posted on 09/12/2001 7:31:21 AM PDT by Valin
Leading up to last Sunday, when the hottest war movie of the moment, "Band of Brothers,'' had its first installment on television, its author was asked if the current generation could pull off another D-Day. Stephen Ambrose gave the correct answer. He said yes. He said that if our way of life was threatened, he had no doubt that the young people of today would rally in support of their freedoms. Make that middle-aged people, and older people, too. Point me in the direction of the enemy who destroyed thousands of lives in lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning and I will take up the cause next to my neighbor. This has nothing to do with bravery, because I am not brave. I am angry beyond my ability to express it. It has to do with the protection of everything you hold dear. Your sons and daughters might have been in Manhattan on Tuesday. Your uncle or your brother might have been flying from Boston to Los Angeles. Your cousin might have been standing on the corner on a beautiful New York morning reading about the Yankees in the newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee only to have his life snuffed out by enemies of our country.
It is time that our enemies know we stand together in the common bond of our citizenship. Maybe they see us as weakened and splintered in our various squabbling factions of wealthy and poor, white and black, men and women, liberals and conservatives. Maybe they think we have gotten so soft that they can take our airplanes and fly them into our greatest buildings and fly yet another plane into our Pentagon and we will not react except with meaningless words.
Maybe that's what they think of us, that we have been reduced to words.
They are fools.
We will react. We have to. It is not far fetched to say that as of 9:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, when the second Trade Center collapsed, our freedoms were directly attacked by an enemy that is not merely irritated with us. They want us eliminated. They hate us.
It is mind-boggling to think of the lives lost when two of New York's most imposing landmarks crashed into the ground. It is even more mind boggling that we saw it. We have the videotape that our previous generations did not have when they heard the scatchy words on the radio on a Sunday morning that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
We had the video of the second plane flying into the second tower. That plane was full of Americans. Their lives need to be avenged. The lives of the innocent thousands killed in the collapse of the buildings needs to be avenged.
All other tasks Tuesday morning seemed meaningless next to the need to express this sentiment to someone, to anyone. Think of how this affected your own life. My brother-in-law had departed Philadelphia on Tuesday morning on a commercial airplane.
As I write this we don't know where he landed. My son and his family are in London, and I muttered prayers that our enemies would not attack London. I can't imagine how many Minnesotans had loved ones in Manhattan on Tuesday morning.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5474. Soucheray can be heard 2 to 5 p.m. weekdays on KSTP-AM 1500.
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