NO ONE WINS A WAR
Some people just lose less than others.
I often wonder: has mankind really advanced our civilization? For certain, we have refined our technical skills to an advanced degree – where hundreds, even thousands can be killed by a single act.
Reviewing clips of 911, I came across file photos of other destruction created by the combination of airplanes and bombs. We justify the horrific bombings of Berlin and Hiroshima as means to end a war, and punish an aggressor for the bombing of London and Pearl Harbor. Tim McVeigh, the perpetrator who destroyed the Murrah building in Oklahoma Country paid with his life.
Much of Berlin, especially the eastern portion was still in ruins when I first visited in 1970. Indeed, there were still bombed out buildings in London at that time. The Arizona lies under the water at Pearl Harbor, mute testimony to the havoc created by the Japanese sneak attack. I have also seen the destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and bitter remnants of the blitzkrieg in Russia. but also bombed-out ruins in other parts of a world which has not known real peace since August 14, 1914. The museum in Nanking vividly portrays the massacre there, repeated throughout the Far East as the winds of war swept out of Japan.
These other atrocities have a special niche in history, but the aggressors and victims have moved on. Indeed, Japan and Germany have become prosperous, vital democratic allies.
Yet, here, in America, we cannot move past 911. Ground Zero still cries out for atonement. When I first visited the remains of the Twin Towers in the week which followed, that was my first thought. The thousands of dead innocents all deserve not to have died in vain. We owe them a just resolution. We were not at war with Islam, nor even with Al Queda at that time. This was a sneak attack by terrorists, just like the attacks of December 7, 1941.
Yet, another day which will live in infamy, 911 stands out, not just because the continental United States was the victim this time, but because the aggressor who sought to terrorize our nation has not been duly punished.
The object lesson is not to punish all Muslims, or the nation of Islam as a whole, but to bring before the bar of justice those who plotted and supported the terrorist attacks of 911.
That account has not been settled.
The wound remains open – as fresh for many as the day of the attacks.
Sir Winston Churchill inspects the bomb damage in Coventry. Above, St Paul’s cathedral.
Berlin, 1945
The Murrah building
Hiroshima
Hiroshima
Pearl Harbor