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On the morning after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9-11, I was driving to work and listening to the radio. The commentator was
talking about how everything had changed in America. With hyperbolic language he went on and on about how we will never be
the same again, and how awful it is. As he was speaking, I looked out my window and saw a mother walking her child to school.
In one hand she had a sack, and every few steps she bent over and picked up a piece of litter along the roadside, putting
it into her sack as she and her child talked together on the way to school. Something deep inside of me said, AThis woman
is more real than this radio commentator.@
That Sunday I said, "There is a risk to over-dramatize and hype what has happened, and if we do that, we give power
to the people who have perpetrated this evil deed. No army is threatening to invade us. There is no nation with an arsenal
preparing full scale assault upon our country. This is nothing like what France and Britain and even the United States faced
in World War II. To exaggerate what a small isolated group of terrorists have done only plays into their intention to disrupt.
We must keep our perspective. We are still more threatened by cigarettes and automobiles than by terrorists.
"They've hijacked four planes and struck three buildings. That's all. It is a lot. And the loss of life is staggering.
But part of the battle now is for us to limit the damage only to what happened on September 11. After taking time for the
holy work of honoring our dead and grieving our loss, it is important for us to return to normalcy. It is important for us
to let go of irrational fears, to resist the media hype, and to get on with our lives with confidence. What do we do next?
We go to school and talk with each other and pick up the litter on the side of the road. Our life is good, and we refuse
to let evil people take its goodness away from us."
That's not what happened. Our leaders chose the path of fear, hype and violence. They gave away our goodness that the
evil people couldn't take away. The latest: A couple of weeks ago, in the name of fear, the Bush White House pushed through
legislation that betrays our national character. The constituional right of habeas corpus has been abridged. This safeguard
against illegal imprisonment has been cornerstone of English law since King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. Now the
President of the United States has the power to define someone as an "enemy combatant", confine them indefinitely
without formal charge or access to evidence against them, and interrogate them through inflicting "serious pain,"
defined as "bodily injury that involves extreme pain." In other words, torture. This is immoral and un-American.
Add this latest attack on our freedom to the earlier instances of illegal wiretaps and the increasing evidence that intelligence
was misrepresented to sell the Iraq invasion, and it appears clearer than ever that our leaders in Washington have lost their
moral compass. They've used fear to justify unjust war and to compromise some of our fundamental freedoms.
I've never thought terrorism was an especially significant threat. Impotent little groups use terror tactics precisely
because they don't have the power to threaten in any more significant way. It's mere criminal activity, like the Mafia and
the Klan. You deal with it as a police matter -- cutting off their funds and support while infiltrating them to obtain good
intelligence and break up their little networks.
The only way terrorism can succeed is for people to let themselves become terrorized. It's an interior, spiritual struggle.
If you get angry and fearful enough, you can play into their hands. You can overreact with wanton violence and prove true
their accusations. You can compromise your values and freedoms and imprison yourself in fear. You can surrender your character
as a people of compassion, love and peace. Terrorists can't make you do that. It's your choice.
While obsessed with terrorism, we've ignored some things that really are important. Increasing numbers of Americans lack
health insurance and access to regular medical care, our education lags behind other developed countries, drugs and other
addictive substances rob millions of their freedom, environmental degradation and global warming may be reaching a tipping
point, mental health needs are ignored, prisons have become criminal prep schools, the national debt soars, public discourse
coarsens, the connection between sexual intimacy and fidelity is breaking, a larger portion of our nation's wealth is concentrated
in the hands of fewer people, corporate fraud becomes business as usual, and a climate of corruption gives political access
to the highest bidder. While our leaders fiddle the terrorist tune, they ignore bigger fires. We can do better.
"What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
Micah 6:8
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