Attack on America

By chance I turned on my television at about 9:05 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I saw the second plane strike the World Trade Center tower. I saw the first tower collapse. I saw the second tower collapse. I saw the Pentagon.

My horror was total but somehow distant. That changed.

Through the week, watching the firefighters working, those that were still alive, and people with photos of missing relatives waiting and hoping, the growing fatigue of the journalists and broadcasters trying to continue to inform the world about the details of the tragedy, my horror grew closer and took over my heart and gut. My soul wanted relief so I stopped watching. However, I have not stopped thinking about the people who were killed or injured, nor of their families.

Later on the day of the attack I chanced to walk through the campus of the University of Toronto. Classes have just begun for the fall session. Scattered on the grass, small groups of undergraduates sat talking. It all seemed safe and normal. Almost indecently normal.

As a Canadian I have always had a complicated relationship with America and Americans. I believe that America is the most beautiful country with the most wonderful, crazy, energetic, hard-working people in the world. That America does good, and sometimes bad, and sometimes ugly, then in the next moment, something beautiful. Americans are not perfect. No one is. Not even Canadians are perfect. Americans try to do so much, for themselves, for others, for the future. Americans are wonderful people.

I want to say a few words about the past.

There is no question that this attack was cowardly, horrible, and tragic. The choice of reaction that America with NATO will make is a critical one. War is horrible. The costs of war are easily forgotten, our minds do not want to remember. The veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War, can tell if they can find the words to summon up their memories that most have kept hidden away, what the cost of war is.

Afghanistan is a place that the British in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th century have fought. They found it a difficult place to fight a war. They had many casualties.

As someone pointed out a long time ago, it is the old men who decide to wage war, and the young men and women who die or are maimed.

The choice of reaction must be a wise one.

- William J. Gibson -