One Month After - Thoughts On October 11, 2001
by Jan Sullivan Dockter, Program Director, Ministry of Money

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, my emotions have been in constant motion, moving from shocked numbness to overwhelming grief, and every reaction in-between.  Initially, like millions in this country, I was glued to the television watching hour upon hour of news coverage late into the night, mesmerized by the planes exploding into the towers time and time again, and engaged by the inspiring stories of both those who made it out alive and those whose loved ones will never return home.

On that unforgettable and tragic morning, I came into my office a little after 9AM and learned from my co-workers about the World Trade Center attacks, and a few minutes later heard the radio report of the crash into the Pentagon.  The news of a still-missing fourth plane was troubling, especially so when I heard that there was speculation that it might be headed toward Camp David or Site R (the Underground Pentagon).  Though I work in the DC area, my family and I live about ½ mile from Site R and a stone’s thrown from Camp David along the Pennsylvania/Maryland border.  I decided to leave the office and head for home early, knowing that Beltway traffic would be rushing north out of DC toward the suburbs very shortly and because I felt the need to be closer to home and my children if anything should happen there.  On the drive north, the radio announced that the fourth plane had crashed near Somerset, PA and that all missing planes were now accounted for.  As glad as I was that my family and I were safe, I have to admit being extremely anxious about the closeness in proximity these events were taking place to us.

Over these past weeks, my initial shock has given way to an intense sadness, as intense as that of the broken heart of a lover betrayed.  And as I pondered this deep ache, I realized that though it was certainly for the victims and their loved ones, my grief and mourning went even deeper and beyond those things.

As someone who’s been gifted with the opportunity to visit third world countries -  countries in political upheaval, those who’ve experienced horrific natural disasters, places whose history reads page after page of bloodshed and despair -  I realized that the heartache and sadness I felt for the victims of these terrorist attacks were no different than the ache I felt standing in the midst of these countries I’d visited – the only difference being that this time it was in my own backyard and lacked the safety of an ocean between me and the incident.  The faces on the TV screen and their stories were much more like my own than those in some distant land and for that reason, perhaps more vivid.  But I realized that whether the victims lived next door or on another continent, my heart broke the same.  The heinous acts experienced here in the US didn’t seem to be any more evil or painful than those experienced on a daily basis by people around the globe in similar circumstances – but apparently being the target this time made it seem that way.

Immediately after the attacks, US flags and patriotic paraphernalia began showing up on homes, cars and public buildings.  “United We Stand” and “God Bless America” were everywhere I turned.  My daughter came home from school singing the Green Beret ballad that they’d started rehearsing for middle school chorus.  President Bush was announcing that ‘the evildoers’ were attacking us because they resented our democratic freedom and that our collective mission was to eradicate these demons.  Military action loomed in the not-too-distant future.  Ultimatums were being given.  And those of us on the ‘right’ side of this ‘war on terrorism’ were announcing that ‘anything goes.’

Something beyond my initial mourning began to stir and simmer.   I was seeing first hand our nation’s ability to gather and unify around a shared and demonized enemy and how that made it so much easier to overlook (and downright deny) our own history, culpability, and complacency.  As someone who has for years questioned our nation’s immediate and short-sighted notion of military action as the sole resolution to conflict, I became aware that these particular events, this unique situation taking place on US soil, was going to make it a lot harder and lonelier to debate and oppose the dominant culture’s take on things.  Suddenly people who’d been fairly objective and knowledgeable of US history and policy had come down with a bad case of amnesia.  Progressive and liberal folks I’d known for years were suddenly calling for military responses and placing peel-and-stick US flags on every flat surface.  It seems my spiritual and political questioning, my desire for both personal and collective examination, and my wrestling with the statements being made by our government were becoming intensely irritating to many I came in contact with.  When I’d voice my concern that the US was sidestepping even looking at the ‘why’s,’ I was immediately shut down and told that there was no justification for the terrorist actions – which instantly closed down all opportunity for dialogue and created an environment of ‘get in line or you’re as bad as the terrorists themselves.’

I recently had lunch with two former co-workers.  As we chatted over our Mexican fare, my liberal Democrat friend proceeded to share her ‘bomb the hell out of them’ rationale, including the particularly endearing phrases of “how dare they do this to us in our homeland” and “I have a right as an American to feel secure.”  My favorite was, “I was lucky enough to be born in this country and by God, I am entitled to certain privileges and safeties.”  Over the course of this rather uncomfortable reunion, I tried to share my own conflicting emotions, my personal fears, my concerns for justice, and my lack of trust in our government’s reaction to this crisis.  They were amused and called me naive.  I was told I was not patriotic.

I felt very alone as I drove home from lunch that day.  Immediate and extended family members and friends from around the country were questioning where my loyalties were, were feeling betrayed by me, and thought me idealistic to believe there might be other responses, perhaps even more ‘Christian’ responses, than spending billions of dollars and killing who-knows-how-many people, both Americans and others, to forcibly show how right (Godly) ‘we’ are and how wrong (Satanic) ‘they’ were.  Perhaps the Muslim fundamentalists aren’t the only ones fighting a religious war.

During a recent news conference, President Bush said it was America’s ‘calling’ to rid the world of the ‘evildoers.’  Later that day I came across a headline in an alternative press publication that asked, “How can the oppressor be the one to seek justice?”  How, indeed?  Perhaps we need to broaden our definition of ‘terrorism’ to include not just sectarian acts like those of bin Laden and his followers but acts of state terrorism, like those we in the US tend to call ‘covert action’ and ‘freedom fighting.’  Perhaps our days of the double standard have come back to slap us in the face.

I feel an intense admonition to keep quiet – to go along, to feign amnesia, to stand in unity, to wear a red, white and blue ribbon on my lapel, and have a flag swaying in the breeze from my car or house.  We are to be Americans first and foremost.  We are the free, the proud, the brave and united we stand.  Our self-righteousness is justified and God is on our side.  This is a ‘just war.’  They have it coming.  Everyone knows it. 

But isn’t it dangerous to create a vacuum that denies open discussion and examination?  It seems to me that an essential component to resolving some of these issues over the long haul is to enlarge our boundaries  beyond the immediate, to creatively and spiritually work toward options other than the quick fix of violent retaliation.  If we look to US history, we can see that every military action we’ve entered into began with some sort of moral imperative where we were the ‘good’ guys and somebody else was ‘evil,’ and that we were obliged to do our duty for God, or freedom, or democracy, or human decency or whatever phrase was appropriate.  But in reality, whatever the moral imperative was that began our participation, the means of warfare soon had us acting just like those we’d deemed ‘evil.’  And in the end, innocent people were killed (a/k/a/ collateral damage), and there was more havoc, more wounded, more hunger, more refugees, more orphans, and a larger breeding ground for further and continued violence. 

To be honest, though, the price of opening our eyes at this moment in time could be fairly costly.  Perhaps even more costly to some of us than losing American lives in military conflict.  Because to really move beyond our anger, grief and fear means we have to learn something from this tragedy -  about ourselves, our country and our world.  And those lessons might not be terribly attractive to us.  It might mean we have to look at how we live and at what price to others, both in this country and around the world.  It might mean that we have to own up to our feigned amnesia and take some responsibility for our collective actions abroad – activities that support our American way of life and oppress two-thirds of the world but that we’d rather not know or think about.  It might mean that we start living our voiced Christianity and not put it aside when it becomes too costly or intrudes upon our comfortable lifestyles.  It might mean laying down the rhetoric and looking reality square in the eye.

As difficult and as lonely as it is these days to openly discuss and question our country’s history and policies, I want to continue to defy the admonition to ‘get in line’ and ‘unify’ by being quiet.  I want to continue to irritate those hell bent on our nearsighted innocence and self-righteousness.  Why?  Because I am a parent of two middle-school-age children.  When my children come home and tell of some conflict with another child in the neighborhood, I don’t just automatically accept their summation that the other kid was inherently evil and completely out of line while they were completely faultless.  I ask questions about what they’d been doing, what had been said, and try to determine what each party in the conflict had been doing and how.  I try to show my child how each person had a part in the misunderstanding and help them accept responsibility for their actions in hopes of avoiding another round.  I don’t go beat up or encourage my child to go beat up the other kid, because, obviously, that would be inappropriate and not teach my child anything about conflict resolution.  I would guess that a majority of parents guide in a similar fashion.

If we teach our children using this method of examination and responsibility-taking, why is it wrong to ask the same of one another and our government on issues of larger conflict?  How do we teach our children to take responsibility when we personally and as a country refuse to do so - when we find it safer to play the blame game, the me ‘good,’ you ‘bad’  - therefore ‘I have the right to retaliate with violence toward you’ game?

Yesterday, I drove from my office outside the DC Beltway into the city to view the Pentagon damage.  I needed to see the devastation firsthand to make it seem less Hollywood action thriller and more reality based.  It was an emotional experience for me to be there exactly one month after the event.  Earlier in the day President Bush had attended a ceremony at the Pentagon to mourn those who’d been killed and to again express the necessity and rightness of this week’s military actions.  I’d listened to his speech on NPR on my drive downtown and now there I was at the Pentagon looking at the blackened hole in the side of this strategic stronghold, an American flag draped down from the top, and I was finally able to cry. 

I cried for the dead and their loved ones.  I cried for those who’d managed to escape with their lives but whose lives will forever be changed.  I cried for all Americans as we struggle with the effects of this event on our day-to-day lives and decisions.  I cried for the children and families of Afghanistan who will become even more hungry, displaced, and unstable from the US bombings.  I cried for Muslim fundamentalists who so badly want the US to pay for our real and perceived ill deeds in the Middle East that they’re willing to sacrifice innocent people and themselves.  I cried for Christian fundamentalists who claim special entitlement of God and denounce those outside their beliefs and traditions as demonic and hell-bound.  I cried for President Bush and other government officials who want so much to believe in our innocence and righteousness no matter what the real facts are.  I cried for America’s resistance to examining its actions and motivations out of fear of understanding what “acting in our nation’s best interest” really means – for us and the world.  I cried for my sense of loneliness at being an often single voice against military retaliation.  And I prayed that God would in his mercy bless us all – not just America – but the whole world.  Because praying and working for peace is patriotic too.

We all need safe places to share the mixed and varied emotions we feel since September 11th.  We need sanctuaries where we can safely question and examine the whys and hows of this tragedy.  Our sense of security in the US has and continues to diminish with each new warning of further terrorist action and we all grieve this loss.  But I encourage us to open up and not shut down - to create places of safety with one another and not raise up red, white and blue barriers of fear that make us enemies if we differ in thought, emotion or reaction.  We could all benefit from a little compassion  - no matter which side of the fence we find ourselves.   And we all could use some gentle reminders that our security comes not from weapons or stock market stability, not from antibiotics hoarded ‘just in case’ or the ‘unity’ of everyone thinking and reacting in exactly the same way, but from God alone.  If we allow ourselves to sink into the security that only God can provide, the clamoring after perceived entitlements and our tight-fisted self- righteousness fade into the shadows that they really are.  The peace we all long for starts with the internal peace of God within each of us – and this is the starting place, the place from which new and creative approaches to resolving conflict and achieving peace can begin to take seed.  It’s not naive.  It’s essential to our survival.