On the 12th of September, 2001, my wife and I awoke slowly, ready to enjoy a day off of work together, and like many couples who don’t ever get enough time to themselves, we were looking forward with happiness to a lazy day together. Better still, it was my 26th birthday. 

It was a good day--with a blue dome of sky over us, much like a similar blue sky that hung over Washington and New York on the other side of the world. (Sept 11th actually happened on the morning of the 12th here, because New Zealand is a day ahead of the USA).

My good-natured contentment only lasted for a few moments. As I went about my morning ritual of making coffee and checking e-mails, I got an e-mail from a friend in Washington DC, saying, "I’m all right now, but I am driving home to North Carolina." We naturally wondered what the hell she was talking about, but that lasted only until I clicked onto Yahoo news and saw the monstrous headlines. I saw the towers burning, heard the news of the other two airliners crashing at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania--and from that moment onward, was plunged into a state of shock and grief that seemed too extraordinarily surreal, and difficult to believe.

 Many thoughts rushed through my head. I remember thinking that now Bush will let Israel to do whatever they want with the Palestinians. We were going to have our next big Middle Eastern war. Now he will use his militaristic swagger and march us all into a conflict that we didn’t ask for, but which has been brought down on us. Now, I thought, my generation has seen for itself the depths of human depravity, and the contrary heights of bravery and achievement. People were jumping from the burning towers, chaos was all around us, and it seemed like we were living some nightmare from an older time, from an age that wasn’t so politically correct as so swear off conflict in the way that so many have today.

But that is the great ironic lesson about conflict; that you can hide in your fair corner of the world, and you can love peace, life, and all that goes with it, but still have to raise yourself to fight against those who would shatter your tranquillity. We have not asked for this, and the worst American actions in history still don’t merit this cruel attack. It often occurs to me that if Arabs wanted to reach us, or expel our troops from Saudi Arabia, or the Gulf Region, this was not the way to do it. To the contrary, it will insure that they stay in the Middle East indefinitely. 

Most of all, such an attack also shows the depth of ignorance on the part of militant Islamists about the qualities of the American spirit. We are not a nation of people who run. And there are million examples from our history of Americans actually doing the reverse of running from danger--running to danger. I often think to myself: Can this do anything but make the situation worse? I ask myself these questions, and all I get are more questions in return.  This age we live in, this time, it is better defined by a wealth of its complexities than it is by any outstanding moral simplicity. There are no easy answers, and they seem to only get harder to find the mo re we look for them. 

After the 11th, I made a point to extend myself with friendship to all the Arabs and Muslims that I know here in New Zealand. I became good friends with a scholar from Afghanistan named Uzair, who was kind enough to talk to me at length about many of the contradictions that exist within Islam today. I asked him how he felt about militant Islamists killing others in the name of Allah, and he told me "In the name of Allah, you don’t kill anything. You don’t kill a fly. If people kill others then they do it for their own reasons, and not for Allah." I listened to Uzair as he restored my hope that an Arab can truly have compassion and understanding, and began to want to learn more. And when I say learn, I can also say with a clear conscience that I am not one of the liberal "all is luminous" minority who believe that we can rationalize mass murder. 

Some have said that we need to look into the reasons why people would want to attack America in such a way, and I agree. But I don’t believe that we can excuse such disgusting acts--and I hope that no person anywhere will give their ideas refuge in liberal idealism. Let them call America "the biggest terrorist in the world," as many have done. These days, all you need to do is oppose the political policy of another group for someone to label you a "terrorist." It has all the same context as "commie" might have had for our parent’s generation. 

So I don’t fear words. I fear them even less when I realize that doing the right thing can often be a lonely endeavour, and that much of the world would prefer to view these struggles on TV, or from the comforts of their soft couch. Perhaps we will never recover from September 11th, because, in some sense, to recover means to move past and to forget--and none of us want to do that. Rather we would prefer to march forward with a heart of sadness, but determined further to do justice to the cause of liberty on the planet. We still have it in us to change things for the better, and if we can make a determined effort to do so, terrorist murderers will not dent our resolve--no matter how many of us they kill, or how many planes and buildings they destroy. Our survival of this is proof that the real war, the war of good and evil inside us all, has already been won.

Author's Biography

I am an American writer who has lived the past three years in New Zealand .  

E-mail Neil at myersneil@yahoo.com

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