Freedom should be our only concern

DISPATCHES

By: Hank Kalet
   I was working out at the health club when it happened.
   A mix of late-’70s rock and more current music was blaring out of the speakers when a health club staffer began running from television to television changing the channel. There was a fire, perhaps an explosion, near the top of one of the Twin Towers. Smoke was billowing upward from what appeared to be a gaping hole.
   The music stopped and the half dozen people in the gym gathered around one of the televisions, where we watched, unsure of what we were looking at.
   The newscasters were saying that a plane may have crashed into the building, a commercial jet, but no one was sure.
   Then smoke was visible from the second tower and ABC began showing video of a jumbo jet smashing into the second tower.
   I finished my workout, eyes glued to the television: Smoke rising from beyond the White House. A fire at the Pentagon, a plane crash, reports of hijackings, the president canceling a Florida speech on education to head back to Washington.
   I took a shower, shocked, angry. As I was dressing, one of the guys at the gym walked into the locker room. "You weren’t out there," he said. "The tower collapsed."
   By the time I made it to our office, the other had crumbled and I was focused on news coverage, finding the local angle.
   All the while, though, my mind was racing, trying to comprehend the devastation we were seeing on the 5-inch TV we had in the office, worrying about the people I knew and loved who were in the city.
   My brother had called before I got in, leaving me a message that he was OK but stuck in the city until further notice. (He finally got home at around 9:30 p.m.)
   We couldn’t reach my sister-in-law — communications were cut off by the volume of people making calls — and there were others, cousins, friends, all of whom would turn out to be all right.
   Everyone I talked with was stunned, many shocked that something of this magnitude could happen on American soil, others frightened, terrified that it could repeat itself anywhere without warning.
   Across the country, Americans seemed to be reacting in the same way.
   Lorna Cannon of Salt Lake City told the Associated Press she felt "violated."
   "You think of the Oklahoma City bombing as the worst thing possible, and then this happens,” she said. "I would just like to be with my husband right now. I would like to gather my family around me."
   And Bert Stacey of Washington, D.C. told The Washington Post that he was "disillusioned and angry."
   "Disillusioned that we’re brought to instant gridlock in one of the world’s most powerful capitals. Disillusioned that the security net didn’t preclude at least some of it. Obviously it was well-planned, well-coordinated."
   And there have been the ugly responses, the intolerance and anger directed at Americans of Middle Eastern descent, "the ship them out/close the borders" attitude I heard all over the radio and read on Web posting boards.
   I’ll be honest. My first reaction was simple. Find the perpetrators and kill them. Kill them.
   This is from a pacifist, from an opponent of capital punishment who abhors violence.
   Over the course of the day, however, I settled into what I can only describe as confusion. I don’t know what I feel or how I should react. I don’t know what the right course of action is here, what our government can do or should do in response.
   The Washington Post is calling for a swift response. The bombing was an act of war, the editorial in its special section said following the attack. It must be treated as such.
   It is a war we need to win, says The Cleveland Plain Dealer, one that we must not shrink from. And Long Island Newsday is calling on the government to find and punish the attackers, while also reminding its readers that we need to grieve for the dead.
   And grieve we should. The thousands who have lost their lives, their families and friends, need our support.
   And we need to come together, to help each other deal with the changed circumstances in which we live. The world is a far different place than it was on Monday, a less secure place. We are afraid, unsure.
   My niece Katelyn told my wife she did not want to die at 13; her sister Keri was visibly shaken.
   It is all so hard to comprehend.
   The only thing I am sure of at this point is that we must remember who we are, remember that we are a free nation and that the rights we have come to take for granted are what makes this nation worth defending. We cannot turn away from them because we are scared, cannot abandon our freedoms for a little more security.
   We should be smart — tightened airport security makes sense, for instance — but we should not panic.
   And we must resist the urge to cast blame, to point our fingers at our neighbors, to scapegoat ethnic groups.
   "If there are outbursts of violence or prejudice, that will have given the terrorists another victory," the Rev. Francis Hubbard of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Monmouth Junction told me Wednesday morning. "We are a pluralist society of freedoms and we need to stick with this. We need to be firm in our respect for all faiths and ethic groups."
Hank Kalet is managing editor of The South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]