This week’s Daily Journal guest columnist is Dr. Michael Sanera, John Locke Foundation Director of Research and Local Government Studies. He delivered these remarks last weekend in Oak Ridge, during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you on this solemn occasion.
This is a time for remembering:
• Remembering those who died nine years ago today,
• Remembering our fighting men and women who are currently risking their lives for us, and
• Remembering one of our most important American values: religious freedom.
Nine years ago at about this time, 19 terrorists hijacked the four airliners, killing the pilots and crews. Their mission was to use those planes — loaded with thousands of gallons of jet fuel and 227 passengers — as weapons in their self-proclaimed holy war on the United States and every thing we stand for.
The first plane hit the World Trade Center North Tower at 8:46 a.m. The second plane hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. The third plane hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.
The fourth plane crashed near Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 a.m. It crashed after the heroic efforts by passengers to regain control of the plane from the terrorists. We later learned that its target was either the White House or the U.S. Capitol building.
Some 2,606 died in New York City and 125 at the Pentagon. In New York, more than 400 firefighters, police, and other emergency workers gave their lives trying to save others.
I was in New York City in early August 2001 for a convention, and I daily passed a fire station near Times Square on the way to the subway. I often wonder how many of those firefighters whom I saw polishing their trucks died in the attack one month later.
Those of us who witnessed the carnage on television will have different memories indelibly etched in our minds. For me, it was people trapped on the upper floors jumping to their deaths.
One of my colleagues at the John Locke Foundation who lost a family member in the World Trade Center wrote her memories about that day:
“I was stunned — both emotionally and logically — by people jumping, or simply stepping, out of Tower windows as their preferred option. What do you have to suppose about your future to make that choice your best alternative?
One pair I recall held hands as they stepped out, linked a final time to another person, starting the long fall down the side of the building. I remember wondering, in stupefied amazement, “Why would I hold someone’s hand going out the window?” jumbled with, “It doesn’t make sense. How silly that would be.” And then I realized, “Who cares how silly it would be? It makes perfect sense.”
Since then, other countries have been attacked — most notably, Bali, in 2002, where 202 died; Madrid, in 2004, where 191 died; and London, in 2005, where 52 died.
In the largest sense, these attacks targeted the Western values we share with Western Europe and free countries in Asia.
In other words, terrorists want to destroy:
• our system of representative government,
• our free enterprise system,
• our tradition of the rule of law, and
• our tradition of religious freedom.
They want to destroy our way of life.
Armed forces
Next, we must remember the men and women who are currently fighting to protect us from continued attacks. Every day they face an enemy that knows no country, does not wear uniforms, hides among civilians, and targets our forces with hidden roadside bombs.
This is perhaps the most demanding job we have ever asked our young soldiers to do. Every day these 18- to 20-year-olds must make life-and-death decisions. They must decide in a split second whether to kill or be killed — whether to fire their weapons to save the life of their compatriots. This is an awesome responsibility to give our young people.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are personal to most of us. Most of us either have a family member or know someone who is serving or has served in Afghanistan or Iraq. This reality brings the war home to all of us. We must remember them. We must pray for them.
Every Sunday, the pastor at my church includes prayers for all service men and women and especially those service men and women from our congregation.
My nephew is currently in Afghanistan flying a Blackhawk rescue helicopter for the Air Force. This is his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.
In 2007, he served a year in Afghanistan in the Army as a company commander of an Apache attack helicopter company. During that tour, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery when he rescued a small secret detachment by flying them out of a firefight on the skids of his helicopter.
One of my colleagues who I served with in the Army in Berlin in the early 1970s lost his son in Afghanistan in January 2008.
Next month, President Obama will posthumously award the Medal of Honor, our country’s highest award for bravery, to my colleague’s son, Staff Sgt. Robert Miller.
In 2008, Sgt. Miller was on patrol with his Special Forces team and Afghan security forces near the Pakistan border. The team came under fire.
Sgt. Miller’s father tells the story of the battle:
“Rob’s [special forces team] with Afghan military leading was engaged in an hours-long firefight with bad guys in northeast Afghanistan right on [the] Pakistani border. … [After calling in air support], Rob was [on] point with the Afghanis. They were confronted and ambushed. Rob’s officer was hit. Rob took over command of … the U.S. and … Afghan soldiers. [Rob] gave direction in English and Pashto (no interpreter needed since Rob talked the language), stayed in kill-zone, took out [a] machine gun, allowed others to get out, even after getting hit, [he] continued to lay down fire. Rob died, but because of holding up insurgents, they were able to get everyone else out. [The] firefight lasted quite a while longer, though. Afghanis played a key role in wrapping up the battle. Also, the mission ended up being extremely successful in amount of damage to insurgents done.”
Thus Sgt. Miller gave his life for eight of his fellow Special Forces soldiers, 15 Afghan soldiers, and all of us.
This war is personal for all of us!
Staff Sgt. Miller was part of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg.
Religious freedom
Last, we must remember that one of our founding principles is religious freedom. The Founders built a country based on the three revolutionary principles:
• political freedom,
• economic freedom, and
• religious freedom.
The religious warfare that destroyed much of Europe in the 30 Years War of the 17th century was not that distant from the Founders’ world in the 18th century. They knew that sectarian violence was a constant threat. Thus they founded our country on the natural rights that God gave to every individual.
The Founders enshrined in the Bill of Rights freedom of conscience, the right to practice religious beliefs unmolested by government and protected by government.
At the time of the founding, there was a small Jewish community in the United States. Like many Protestants and Catholics, they came to America to escape religious persecution. They had experienced deadly pogroms in Europe, where mobs would kill Jews and burn their homes and businesses. Often government authorities would incite these mobs and then turned their backs on the violence.
I’m sure these pogroms were in the back of their minds when the Hebrew community in Newport, Rhode Island, sent a letter of congratulations to the recently elected president George Washington in 1790.
Although they did not express it in their letter, they must have been wondering: What would this new government do? Would the Christian leadership of this new government stand by and let those filled with anti-Semitic hatred attack and kill them?
Washington’s letter in response was crystal clear. “The Government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. …”
Similarly, we are being tested. Each of us is being challenged. Will we live up to the ideals of religious freedom in these difficult times? Will we respond to our Muslim neighbors as Washington responded to the Jewish community in Rhode Island?
I know I often stare a little longer at Muslim women with headscarves and the men with them wondering if they support or are sympathetic with the terrorist cause.
None of us can peer into their hearts and know what is there. But I am sure they are also reacting to our more than casual glances. I don’t know how the majority of them react, but I do know how one Muslim girl who was my student reacts.
I was in Arizona nine years ago when the planes hit the twin towers. I was teaching at a charter high school that had more than its share of Muslim students. Their parents sent their children to this school because it was safe and it had very high academic standards.
Many of the girls wore headscarves, known as the hijab, long-sleeve shirts and long pants as sign of modesty even in the hot Arizona summers.
I have kept in contact with some of those Muslim students, and recently I have been worried that they might suffer from verbal attacks or physical violence because of their faith.
So I expressed my worries to one of my former students, and she wrote me this response. “We tend to just ignore the happenings, as there is not much we can do about them. These tides ebb in and out, and so we just hope for the best.”
“But this has been my personal motivator in life, so that I push myself to the highest potential to prove the world wrong about who I am so that I am not judged before I am allowed to speak. It has shaped me as a person, I think in a good way, and for that I am thankful.”
I was blown away by that response. Not a speck of anger or resentment, not even frustration. She is not returning anger with anger, but with a commitment to be a better person. Such wisdom from a college student.
Conclusion
This is a time to remember!
We must remember those who died on 9/11 in New York City, Washington, D.C., and in rural Pennsylvania. We must remember our fighting men and women who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we must remember one of our most cherished ideals: religious freedom, handed down to us by our Founding Fathers.
Again, thank you for inviting me to speak on this solemn occasion.