An Essay on Terrorism

An Essay on Terrorism

September 11 2001: a date that will live in infamy. This is the horrible truth.

December 29, 1890 a date that will in infamy. This is a horrible truth.
January 1-6, 1923; dates that will live in infamy. This is a horrible truth.
December 7, 1941 a date that will live in infamy. A horrible truth.
April 4, 1968, this is a date that will live in infamy. A horrible truth.

These dates are but a few dates, like as so many others should be burned in our memories.
My heart goes out and I suffer with undisrupted grief for the lives lost.
I cried with countless tears, for the cruelty in their deaths on September 11, 2001.
My eyes swollen and red, I prayed for understanding and most of all peace in this world gone mad.
Even more I prayed for forgiveness for the misshapen hearts that could justify the horror of that and other days.
I prayed for it to stop, this hatred of man for man.
I prayed in spite of the knowledge that it would simply go on.
This realization brought me to American history, these dates of the past.

September the 11, was not the first time terrorism has shown its twisted face in our country.
Every time an Indian village was burned and woman and children were massacred;
terrorism showed its face.
Every time a cross was set a blaze in some yard it showed its face.
Every time a church was blown up we saw the face of terrorism.
We in America know the horrible faceless face of terror in carnet.
This truth maybe painful to accept and sobering to embrace, but we have seen it here before.

The death toll was different,
the mode of execution was different,
the outcome the same.
Death was its name.
The name for the act was the same, Terrorism.
It brought us to our knees, it brought us to tears,
it brought us old…. and new fears.
This was simply the newest act of terrorism’s horror.
We were left with disbelief and uncertainty in or voices.

Yes we will survive. Yes we will get past this terrorist act on our everyday lives.
We will get past this not because we are Americans, but because we are humans.
We are the children of a powerful creator.
We have been made in many shapes and forms but we are human, in Gods own image.
If we believe and place our trust in a forgiving being, all powerful and just,
we will move on as we must.

Just as we have gotten past the other dates so infamous in history;
this date will be the same.
We can move on, all the while praying it never happens again…
Until to does…..

Written September 15, 2001.