|
Robert K. Haelig Jr. |
Some
Historical
Perspective and Images
of the Attack on America
by Robert K. Haelig Jr.
September
17, 1862: Outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland, the armies of General
George McClellan and General Robert E. Lee faced each other in the
early morning of the deadliest day in American history.
A New Birth Of Freedom
Forty
eight hours later, Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet at the White House
in Washington that the sacrifices of 5300 Union and Confederate
soldiers, killed in the epic battle at Antietam Creek, gave him the
impetus he needed to elevate the spiritual level of the Civil War to
the promise of a new birth of freedom.
The
Proclamation implementing the new freedom was circulated on New Year’s
Day, 1863.
September
11, 2001: Using fuel-loaded hijacked airliners as guided bombs,
nineteen terrorists, on a delusional suicide-obsessed short cut to
paradise, destroyed twin towers of the World Trade Center and part of
the huge Pentagon office building outside of Washington, killing
nearly 7000 innocent people and shaking the American nation to its
core in an awakening even more rude and palpable than the attack on
Pearl Harbor three score years before.
 Like
The Surreal Photographs Of Richmond Following Appomattox
The
terrorists destroyed a slice of New York City; made it a bombed out
apparition like Berlin in 1945 or Hiroshima, or parts of London during
the blitz, or the haunting ancient imagery in the surreal photographs
of Richmond in the days following Appomattox.
Nobody
wore battle uniforms as the airliners exploded in their targets, but
the terrible carnage in New York, Washington D.C. and the crash in
western Pennsylvania made last Tuesday the deadliest single day in
American History.
Principles Of Freedom Clearly At Issue
It was a
grim replacement for Antietam; and basic principles of freedom were,
once again, clearly at issue.
George
Patacki, Rudolph Giuliani and President George Bush, trying to manage
the unthinkable in thinkable terms, became heroes themselves through
their love and compassion and commitment and tenacity.
Colin
Powell, the first African American Secretary of State and already a
hero of the Gulf, made a solemn and reasoned pledge for a declaration
of war against terrorism to raise the prospect and promise of justice
and a rebirth of freedom from fear in America and the world.
The Times
That Try Men’s Souls - New Tests From Time To Time
“These are
times that try men’s souls”, said Tom Paine nine generations ago”,
and, he might have added, “there will be new tests from time to time”.
Hero fire
fighters and police and rescue workers scratched through the rubble of
a million tons of concrete and steel and masonry still crushing most
of the victim-heroes, not a few of whom were the heroic fire fighters
and police officers who went in first, just before the two giant
buildings collapsed over them.
“You Need
To Pay Attention” Said The Israelis
The
Israelis reminded us: “You need to pay attention. We told you this
would happen; you with your Yankee confidence and your mindset that
refuses to accept the reality of people in the world who don’t
necessarily think like you do.”
“They have
been killing our people for hundreds of years, and now they are once
again killing your people. You thought it couldn’t happen in America.
This is another hideous rite of passage to the real world.”
Benjamin
Netanyahu Talked About
“The Mad Irrational Ideology” Of Terrorism
Benjamin
Netanyahu said: “we are dealing with people who put their ideological
zeal, their fantasies, their mad irrational ideology above the
sanctity of human life.”
“The
extremists are also fanatics: they are obsessed with reversing the
rise of the West and restoring Islam to its former glory: it is to
them a holy war; killing innocent people is part of their mission”,
said the former Israeli Prime Minister.
Admiral
Isohuru Yamamoto, after the attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2117
Americans, calmly told his staff: “I fear that all we have done is to
awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”.
The
determined World War II generation of Americans proved Admiral
Yamamoto’s fears correct; they gave us a world that we mostly enjoyed
immensely - until last Tuesday morning reminded us with searing
intensity one more time that liberty still does not come cheap, and
the bill is sometimes presented without prior notice.
As this is
written, there are a thousand cars parked in city and suburban
commuter parking lots still waiting stoically and patiently and
pathetically for their owners to return.
We Weep With Them And Try Helplessly To Share Their Grief
A
suffering host of daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, brothers
and sisters, friends and neighbors is weeping and grieving; we weep
with them and try helplessly to share their grief.
We also
feel a vaguely unfamiliar anguish that became abruptly familiar to
previous generations, and now is painfully learned again as a result
of enormous crimes against humanity in two of America’s most famous
and cherished cities.
The
sleeping giant is awake, and filled again with the same chilling and
terrible resolve. As always, the central issue concerns a new birth of
freedom.
The Author is a former State
Assemblyman and, for twenty-three years, a Commissioner on the Dover
Township Municipal Utilities Authority. |
