BY HOWARD ZINNNOVEMBER 2001
The images on television were heartbreaking: people on fire
leaping to their deaths from a hundred stories up; people in panic
racing from the scene in clouds of dust and smoke.
We knew there must be thousands of human beings buried under
a mountain of debris. We could only imagine the terror among the
passengers of the hijacked planes as they contemplated the crash,
the fire, the end. Those scenes horrified and sickened me.
Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified
and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of
punishment.
We are at war, they said. And I thought: They have learned
nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the twentieth
century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war,
a hundred years of terrorism and counterterrorism, of violence
met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.
We can all feel a terrible anger at whoever, in their insane
idea that this would help their cause, killed thousands of innocent
people. But what do we do with that anger? Do we react with panic,
strike out violently and blindly just to show how tough we are?
"We shall make no distinction," the President proclaimed,
"between terrorists and countries that harbor terrorists."
By Howard Zinn