ANOTHER DAY OF INFAMY:
WAKING UP TO A CHANGED AMERICA

Sunday Meeting, September 16, 2001

OPENING WORDS

Good morning - good morning to each and all of you. This great and unique nation has undergone a terrible tragedy in recent days. That's not news to any of us, yet it still behooves us to try to make sense of that which appears to be senseless. At the same time we must abide in our pain and sadness, in our fear and anger, in our hope and grief, and in our resolve and resignation. Let's be thankful to be with one another today - to connect with friends and neighbors old and new, with visitors and members of this Society, a religious institution based on the spiritual premise that the way we treat and engage with one another - the ways in which we strive to bring out the best in each other - is the very heart of ethical reciprocity.

Today we gather from all parts of this astonishing and wounded metropolis to mourn the dead, those innocent human beings, our fellow citizens who had no idea what was in store for them this past Tuesday except another day of work, achievement and camaraderie. They all expected to go home again at the end of the day.

"Let us be thankful," writes novelist George Eliot, "that our sorrow lives in us an indestructible force, only changing in form, as forces do, and passing from pain to sympathy. To have suffered much is like knowing many languages. Thou has learned to understand all." May we be thankful then for those whose memory we keep, while feeling personally devastated that our loss is so deep.

The music this morning has been chosen by our Music Director Gerry Ranck to help carry us from grief to consolation to affirmation that is our moral trajectory. To reflect upon death and its significance to the way in which we live our lives is to graduate from knowledge to wisdom. Albert Camus once put it thusly in a moving essay in 1933: "Once we have accepted the fact of loss, we understand that . . . we are not here in order to stop . . . we seek anew, enriched by pain. And the perpetual impulse forward always falls back again to gather new strength. The fall is brutal, but we set out again." And I would add, we must set out again, as America, whose destiny is to be forever young for liberty, must prepare once more to seize the moment of change - the monumental change inaugurated - against our will - on September 11, 2001. One could awaken the following morning and admit, what a difference 24 hours can make! Our whole situation, our predicament as a nation, was instantly and decisively altered; life's surprises, for either individuals or nations, can sometimes be monumental, incomprehensible and cruel. As Americans, which all of us are first and foremost, we have the ability and courage to enter into a different era, whether of our own choosing or not, grapple with it and make it our own, something that is positive and enduring for all.

ADDRESS

Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001: as I awakened around 6:30, I was happily struck by what promised to be a splendid, crisp, cloudless sunny - in short, an exquisite summer day. The early morning colors of a new day are particularly lovely. After a while I got out of bed and slowly ascended the stairs to the roof of our two-floor Brooklyn co-op building, stepped out into the warm breeze and, as so many times before, gazed upon the superlative skyline of lower Manhattan. And looming above everything else around it, the gleaming twin towers of the World Trade Center seemed to anchor and command the very ground on which they rested so sturdily, like the virtual prow of a ship about to embark upon the waters of New York harbor. All in all, a thrilling sight, a great way to start the day. I came back down the stairs, showered, got dressed, and turned the radio dial to WNYC as I made some breakfast. Suddenly the usual run of news was interrupted by a startled announcement that a plane was seen heading straight toward the top of the north tower; the time, 8:42 a.m. My first thought was, could it be another hapless pilot losing control of private aircraft? But the sun was out, couldn't the pilot see clearly, I thought naively to myself? Momentarily an image of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building and encountering and tussling with a pesky toy-like plane flashed through my mind from the famous 1930s film I had seen as a youngster. I quickly switched from radio to television in order to get a better handle on what was being described. There it was, an American Airlines plane zooming with great speed as if to a prearranged rendezvous with that stalwart structure. In just minutes it slammed into it with great force and exploded, causing the upper portion of the north tower to be engulfed in black smoke. Confusion, stupefaction and bewilderment characterized the ensuing conversation at the television studio.

Before long, 18 minutes later, another, much larger aircraft, a United Airlines plane, was shown approaching the south tower and in seconds literally sliced into it like a meat cleaver about one-third of the way down from the tower's height, causing a huge fireball, fed by jet fuel, to lick its way to the top, crowning it with terrifying flames, unbearable heat and, again, ominous black smoke such that it first looked like the plume of an atomic explosion. At this point no one witnessing this horrendous event could consider it to be a mere accident. It had to be deliberate, it had to be planned, it had to have a reason. The realization quickly dawned upon us that we were face to face with a genuine national emergency precipitated by remarkably bold actions soon to be deemed tantamount to a declaration of war. But no one group or nation claimed responsibility. If this was war in the truest sense of the word, it hadn't been declared.

How were we going to respond to such a cluster of unprecedented developments? By erecting no more tall buildings, let alone skyscrapers that virtually invite destruction in this vulnerable age? Places where many New Yorkers who had safely worked in for years now swore they would do so no longer? By building that inane, outrageously expensive missile defense shield touted by the President as if it were a sure bet to protect us - from what exactly? Will it protect us from biological or chemical attacks? Absolutely not. Will it actually detonate incoming missiles before they reach this continent? Technologically, that's utterly unproven as of now. Ours being an open society, a porous, easily infiltrated country, what is to stop yet another would-be martyr from walking calmly into the center of any city carrying a suitcase with an atomic device that, once the right moment has arrived, could be set off, leveling in an instant a whole metropolitan area and its entire population, let alone generating lethal fallout well beyond its periphery?

When one stops to contemplate the mind-boggling import of just two hijacked planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing a still continuing ripple effect of material, human and psychological devastation, one has to wonder about what hatred we as a nation have somehow sown in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, in Latin America, and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. If you haven't seen the terrifyingly honest film, Lumumba, make a point of doing so, for it depicts the brutal colonialism of the European penetration and theft of that continent's natural wealth for over a century - or add up the enormous wealth extracted from India by its British conquerors even earlier, and you begin to get a sense of the legacy of the West's greed and exploitation of non-white peoples. In Lumumba you are vividly - and accurately - reminded of the exceptional brutality and rapacity of the Belgian Congo's overlords and the acquiescence of our Embassy and Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies of America's shadow government behind the ostensible elected facade that most of our fawning media report on for the most part.

I also recommend you pick up a copy of an exceptionally insightful and convincing analysis of our arrogant depredations throughout the world in Jonathan Kwitny's classic study, sometimes used in university classes, entitled Endless Enemies. Published in 1984 and written by a vintage first-rate Wall Street Journal reporter for thirteen years, Jonathan Kwitny, who worked from the Journal's New York City bureau, has lived or traveled in more than eighty countries where he did a lot of astute watching, listening and learning. He writes, for instance, about our involvement with Iran in the 1970s: "In 1978 and 1979 countless thousands of Iranian civilians suffered brutalities from American-supplied weapons. United States guns killed them, United States cattle prods burned them, United States experts taught their oppressors how to torture them. American citizens remained largely unaware of this, . . ." Is it any surprise that the Ayatollah Khomeni's fury could topple the self-indulgent Shah, followed by the infamous hostage situation in Teheran that transpired at the end of President Carter's hapless term? "Endless Enemies," comments former Colorado Representative Patricia Schroeder, ". . . with inspired common sense, . . . shows how United States foreign policy has been driven by arrogance, naivete, and corporate greed, . . ." And in the book's inside flap cover these words: "Is it really necessary for the United States . . . to support tyrants around the world? . . . Why . . . are we in constant peril of war with a seemingly unending list of enemies? . . . our behavior, no matter who is president, is out of control. . . . We ruin the countries we go to help - destroying the very values we intervene to secure - and we corrupt ourselves in the process. . . . (The revelations about the way the giant corporations, the unions, the banks, and the CIA behave abroad are shocking . . .) But [Kwitney] also shows how, when we keep our calm and act according to our nation's fundamental principles, the results are often exceedingly favorable. Thus, our hope for the future lies in the strengths that have sustained us in the past." Be that as it may, let's not forget that we have yet to get our own house in order. We all saw, for example, the kind of problem that Kwitny refers to, in televised scenes of Palestinians rejoicing at our national distress, chanting "God/Allah is great" on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For decades, however rightly or wrongly, they have felt put upon by the iron alliance between Israel and the United States whose destinies have become linked to one another when it comes to foreign policy. What we've been experiencing is what's summed up in a new political term, "blowback," the chickens coming home to roost. Surely it is urgent that we understand why and how such developments as Kwitny describes have come to pass.

The events of September 11th sent shock waves throughout the entire texture of this country and alarmed much of the rest of the world; personal lives were variously, pointedly disrupted. Airports were closed; major athletic events cancelled, the New York mayoralty primary elections postponed, the White House, Pentagon and the national Capitol evacuated, the stock market closed for an unprecedented four successive days - one catastrophe, one disruption, igniting another.

The virtual vaporization of the World Trade Center's twin towers, an awesome sight, created thick, menacing billowing clouds that turned the damaged part of Lower Manhattan into a moonscape carpeted with inch-thick layers of pulverized white concrete dust. I'm sure no one going to work in that part of town in the early refulgent hours of September 11^th expected to die that morning, or to lose loved ones in great numbers. Fortunately, hardly any children were killed, but many parents were, so a whole crop of kids became overnight orphans. Who's going to care for them, support them, nurture them?

But let's return to the larger picture.

Is Osama bin Laden, sheltered by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, merely a front for a more extensive conspiratorial enterprise requiring years of detailed planning that ended in a horribly brilliant execution of its goals? Might not Iraq and Saddam Hussein be part of such an undertaking? We don't know yet, we may never know entirely, which may mute a United States-led international military crusade that all the pseudo-tough talk and rah-rah patriotism and flag waving will not disguise for long. I don't see anybody waving a copy of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, which, in our suddenly desperate search for security, might well be downplayed. I vividly remember the McCarthyist period of the 1950s all too well when as a rule Americans looked askance at individuals who bravely insisted on publicly exercising their First Amendment rights. Progressive clergy could be expelled from their pulpits for publicly criticizing the mentally deranged but politically shrewd Senator Joseph McCarthy. All I can say in this regard is that if we give up liberty for safety, we will end up neither safe nor free.

The endless evocation of Christian-oriented sentiments in the secular square continues with the current Administration. Thus the headline on yesterday's Times' first page says it all: "Bush Leads Prayer . . . Congress Backs Use of Armed Force": piety and militarism bound together once more. And just below is an article titled, "U.S. Demands Arab Countries 'Choose Sides.'": "either declare their nations members of an international coalition against terrorism, or risk being isolated in a growing global conflict." Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, white versus dark skin, is again rising. It's this kind of stuff that Kwitny was properly concerned about in an almost prophetic book. Wasn't there a book long ago with the title, The Ugly American?

Speaking of organized religion and some of its predictable deficits when it comes to understanding how the world really works and how, specifically, to respond to the current national emergency, let's turn to Jerry Falwell for a moment. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement Thursday responding to antigay remarks made earlier in the day by the Rev. Jerry Falwell on the Christian news show The 700 Club. When host Pat Robertson asked Falwell to comment on Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Falwell went on a tirade, naming all the groups he deems responsible for setting the stage for such an event to happen: "The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this . . . throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle . . . all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

NGLTF executive director Lorri L. Jean issued a statement that read, in part, "The terrible tragedy that has befallen our nation, and indeed the entire global community, is the sad byproduct of fanaticism. It has its roots in the same fanaticism that enables people like Jerry Falwell to preach hate against those who do not think, live, or love in the exact same way he does. The tragedies that have occurred this week did not occur because someone has made God mad, as Mr. Falwell asserts. They occurred because of hate. It is time to move beyond a place of hate and to a place of healing. We hope that Mr. Falwell will apologize to the U.S. and world communities. Our hearts go out to the victims of this week's tragedies and their friends and family members."

Falwell has since backtracked a bit, saying that he doesn't believe God had anything to do with the national tragedy but had permitted it to occur by lifting "the curtain of protection." It's amazing how much divinely inspired privileged information is communicated to this fellow.

It's instructive, by the way, to note that in his first speech, all of five minutes in length, concerning the national emergency, President Bush invoked the word "evil" three or four times, as if to contrast it with eternally innocent white-hat America, thus seeding the terrain for a religiously based conflict between good and evil. That was the theology behind the Cold War, now it's possibly being revived, and deliberately.

Let me close with a series of brief observations:

(1) The last time in Western history when a long period of general peace existed was between 1815 and 1914; 1815 marked the end of Napoleon's military reign, thanks chiefly to Wellington. There's a lesson here for us. All of Europe recognized that they had to unite to defeat him once and for all. Thus it's wise the Bush Administration has decided in effect to abjure its absurdly irrelevant unilateralism regarding foreign affairs and instead embrace the notion of a united international effort to bring to justice the perpetrators of this boldest and most recent terroristic act - including its sponsors - and continue to do so indefinitely. An action such as occurred on September 11^th must not be allowed to stand. The demolition of the World Trade Center was the first time since 1812 that an actual attack, conceived abroad but developed and executed covertly on American soil, took place. September 11, 2001 is a date that will therefore live in even greater infamy than the overt Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

(2) Contrary to the President's interpretation, the United States was not targeted for destruction because we are a beacon of freedom but because those who pulled off this highly coordinated feat felt that the peoples they allegedly represent had been contemptuously regarded and treated for too long as inferior and unequal and worthy only to be exploited and oppressed.

(3) When everyone thinks alike, everyone, I suspect, is likely to be wrong; when everyone thinks differently from one another, nobody is likely to be right, so chaos reigns. Consequently, I for one am always uneasy when everyone goes along merely to get along, as Congress did when it almost unanimously voted to hand Bush a blank check for whatever he wants to spend it on in reference to terrorism.

(4) When Napoleon chose to crown himself as Emperor after a series of amazing military victories, garnering under his rule the biggest empire since Rome, he in fact betrayed the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution that he had set out to spread. In thus contradicting himself morally, he inaugurated the beginning of his own downfall. The lesson for us here: there is no justification to the anti-democratic argument that in order for America to be more secure in perilous times, we have to curtail our civil liberties in some wholesale fashion. Of course we need to establish new and stringent precautions on behalf of greater safety. Inconvenience is one thing, the needless suppression of personal freedoms is another. Not for a moment should an ultraconservative religiously inspired domestic fascism be tolerated.

(5) There's evidence that the third of the four more or less simultaneously hijacked planes which crashed outside of Pittsburgh was indeed headed for the White House and Air Force One, and that a number of passengers who caught on to what was happening via cell phones, realizing they were probably going to die anyway, decided to subdue their assailants. If proven to be so, such an act of collective heroism should be publicly honored as an expression of national gratitude.

(6) Finally, let us again recall the extraordinary suffering, anguish and stress experienced by so many and which will continue to be experienced so long as they live, on the part of those whose friends and loved ones were killed one way or another during this past week. Not knowing whether one's relative is alive or dead is a gut-wrenching, anxiety-producing ordeal. On Friday night, as I walked our dog for his customary evening constitutional, I was astounded - and impressed - to see numerous groups, large and small, holding candlelight vigils in Park Slope where we live. It was indeed a day and night of reflection, remembrance, mourning. In loving memory of all who died and in moral solidarity with their survivors, and not least in profound appreciation for the firefighters whose heroism in saving others' lives caused them to lose their own in unprecedented numbers, which is not to scant police officers, emergency service workers and volunteers who have performed compassionate wonders, let us share a minute of respectful silence.

CLOSING WORDS

On every side we may be deeply troubled but not hemmed in; perplexed but not despairing; hurt but not abandoned; struck down in pain and sadness, but not destroyed. Some of us may not be able to forbear weeping, so weep we should. The assurance and comfort of having had friends and loved ones no longer at our side can nonetheless enable us to retain what we have lost. "Once we have accepted the fact of loss," to quote Albert Camus once more, "we understand that . . . we are not here in order to stop. Free, we seek anew, enriched by pain. And the perpetual impulse forward always falls back again to gather new strength. The fall is brutal, but we set out again . . . what does it truly matter what we lack when what we have is not used up. So many things are susceptible of being loved that surely no discouragement can be final." Perhaps the best way to preclude further days of infamy - though there may be not the slightest assurance this is possible - is to resolve to wake up to the fact of a changed America. Thank you all for your presence today.

Author: Dr. Khoren Arisian, Senior Leader, New York Society for Ethical Culture