September 11, 2003 - To everything there is a season…

September 11th is more than the anniversary of a vicious attack on America. It marks more than the death of some 4,000 people. Most of the 4,000 dead were Americans but others were nationals of countries around the globe. It was more than an American tragedy. Its scope was international. The 19 men who threw away their own lives destroyed more than buildings and lives that morning. They inspired a concerted effort to dismantle and destroy the very foundations of the nation that they attacked. They destroyed the balance carefully wrought through two centuries of development between necessary government power and individual freedom and liberty. The real tragedy for which we must weep is the assault upon this nation’s heritage, launched not by a shadowy band of terrorists but at the highest levels of our government seeking power in the name of security.

It is mete that we should mourn the dead, but we should reflect that the dead whose killing was engendered that morning are buried around the globe. They lie in graves, marked and unmarked. Their names are both recorded and unremarked. They are the victims in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in Afghani huts and Iraqi streets. They are all victims of that September morning’s attack.

The inevitable deaths of innocents – we call it “collateral damage” – in the wars inspired by that suicide campaign can all be laid to the door of the attack's author. So can the death of the American system of ordered liberty, replaced now by an authoritarian regime arrogating to itself the power to monitor every aspect of its citizens’ lives in the name of national security. It is for that too that it has become a time to weep.