Comrades

I told you that I might send an email to all of the people with whom I spent the morning of 9/11/01.  I just realized that one person got omitted, so I'll send him something here in a couple of minutes.

So far I have received responses from all but one.  One sent an email back from Spokane, Washington where he is now a dean in his department. Another responded from Atlanta, GA where he continues to teach college-level sales courses.  One of my friends who worked in the same department as I did responded from NEOMED where she went to work.  The book representative from McGraw-Hill who was in the department that day responded.

We became a strange band of comrades that day.  Just overwhelmed with what we saw happening in New York, then at the Pentagon and finally in a Pennsylvania field.  Actually, the University closed down at noon that day, so the revelations of the last two horrors were experienced at home.  I'd already called my husband earlier in the day and he was out in the back splitting firewood.  He would have had no idea what was happening.

And so now, far from being an isolated incident brought about by a group of terrorists funded by Osama Bin Laden, we know that there are many, many more.  They unite together under the banner of hate and fortify themselves on despising America and everything it stands for.  They are multiplying and in many different countries.  We have the foreign terrorists and then we also have the homegrown kind, such as the brothers from Boston.  Terrorists have filled a leadership vacuum in Iraq and Somalia and Yemen.  They shocked us with the USS Cole and have gone from there.  Their religion is destruction and their understanding of the Muslim faith is skewed and misapplied.

You have to know an enemy in order to fight them.  Isn't that what we've learned over the years?  We had to understand Nazi propaganda to battle against the Germans who pledged to it their all.  We had to understand Mussolini and his Fascism.  We had to make sense of Karl Marx and his organized rantings in Mein Kampf.  But overwhelmingly, we had to be smart, well armed, and well trained.  We had to have military leaders who took the battles to the Mariana Islands in the Pacific.  And then those who went into France.  The stealth that brought about the amazing battles along the coast at Normandy in France cost us dearly but turned the tides of that war. 

And so, Americans have to come to grips with yet another threat to our freedom right here.  Terrorists do their work by sneaking around, by working their way into the fabric of normal American life, and who don't mind one bit blowing themselves up.

We also have to be able to identify the enemy in order to fight them.  And that's perhaps the toughest job of all in these times.  Just who are they?  Where are they?  Just in Minnesota?  Or where else?  Which mosque is preaching the language of war and hate?

As a little kid born in 1946, the great war was over.  America was rebounding.  Work was plentiful.  People were starting to barbeque and there were no more rations of butter and sugar.  We had won after all.  It was said to be the war to end all wars. 

And then came Korea.  And then came Vietnam.  And then came the first Gulf War in 1993.  And it continued in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And it continues within our own country because we are generous about opening our doors to immigrants.  And we haven't closed our gates against those who would come without papers with the intent of creating mayhem.

The plan to deal with all of this must be multifold.  Can we triumph?  I am sure that we can.  When I grew up, many of my classmates thought they could do anything and they did.  We responded to a young president's Inaugural Address when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country."

My generation responded to that call and I think are still ready to respond again.  Follow the lead of the Greatest Generation as Tom Brokaw calls them -- those who fought in WW II. 

America is a remarkable place, exceptional.  May God be with us and bless us and guide us.