Redefining "War"
Sep 16 '01
The Bottom Line Remind them what America is.
How do you explain the inexplicable? How do you make sense of the senseless? How do you speak around the growing lump in your throat as you watch the New York City skyline being transformed before your unbelieving eyes?
Standing on the corner of Mt. Prospect and Second in Newark, NJ, a boy of 11 scanned the eastern horizon for his favorite skyscraper. His eyes found it at its usual location.
"Good old Empire State Building.", he muttered to himself, "Right where it should be." As he turned into the corner dimestore, he rolled his eyes at himself for saying something so stupid. "Of course it's 'right where it should be'! Who's gonna decide it's not, the President? I'll bet he would need the Army, and even then..."
The boy liked skyscrapers. The Empire State and Chrysler buildings looked like two big rockets about to launch off of Manhattan Island. He liked the Empire State Building a little better, because of King Kong.
He used to wonder about what kept them from falling over, especially on a windy day. Then his friend Mike, who was fourteen, and therefore, a genius, told him that skyscrapers are built to sway in the wind. He wasn't entirely convinced, and that's why he made regular trips to the corner of Mt. Prospect and Second. He wanted to see the skyscrapers swaying in the wind.
Coming out of the store, he studied the skyline as he walked down the steep incline of Second Avenue. His eyes stopped briefly at the new towers, one of them only half completed just past the Chrysler Building. He stopped and frowned at them. He thought they were ugly. They were just two big rectangles. His friend Mike said that these were going to be the World Trade Towers, and they were going to be the tallest buildings in the world.
"Big deal!", he remembered telling Mike. "I could build something taller than the Empire State Building, and it would look a lot better than two stupid boxes!" Such was the uncomprehending innocence of an 11 year-old boy in the summer of 1971.
On top of the thousands of casualties from this latest sneak attack, I mourn one more. On September 11, 2001, millions of American children underwent an assault upon their innocence. Small comfort that sixty years ago, American children of that era were similarly attacked.
I am not a parent. Perhaps this affords me a certain objectivity when addressing my friends' children. I've corresponded this week with many who were setting about the grim task of explaining madness and death to an audience that deserved at least a few more years of goodness and happy endings. These are the thoughts that I've shared with them:
The world is once again threatened by a madman. Our civility and abhorrence for war allowed this virus to fester until he infected enough people to do his bidding. There will be questions in the next generation of history books as to what could have been done to prevent this, but the advantage of hindsight makes those questions moot. The pertinent chapters of those books will describe how we again rose up to defend freedom, honor, and goodness.
Tell your children how good triumphed over evil almost sixty years ago. Tell them how good people sometimes have to do bad things against evil to destroy it. The fact that we know these things are bad is what makes us good. Good people hate to destroy anything, including evil, but when it crawls out of its lair and attacks, it will continue to do so if we do nothing.
That is why grownups will have to chase this monster back into its cave. We must then find that cave and destroy it, with the monster it spawned. Tell them that some of the bravest grownups in the world may get hurt in this fight. Some have already given their lives.
Tell them it's ok to be afraid, because fear will keep them vigilant. Tell them that mom and dad are already vigilant, and that will keep them safe. Finally, tell them that good always, in the end, triumphs over evil. You can promise them that. The 11 year-old boy, now grown to a 41 year-old man, promises that.
"Courage is not the lack of fear, it is the mastery over it."
- Mark Twain
Godspeed my friends,
Alfonse Nobile (Brillat)
New Jersey 1960-1999
California 1999-present
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