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Submitted by

Brittany

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"Anyway, I am very scared about my generation. They do not seem very concerned about what is going on in America these days... the only reason some of them are concerned is that they would have to go to war, but they show no compassion for those who have lost their lives, or anything else, that has to do with what has happened now, or in the past, that built America. I, personally, take these things heavy. The school shootings affect me very hard, and I cry when those happen as well, while my friends are laughing and just saying they are happy it didn't happen to us.
Well, I guess I have gone on enough."

written 

and submitted by

Nikki ...age 16

I love America and am a Vietnam Vet; I have never been so overwhelmed by saddnes as with this time and what I've just experienced here! So sad this is what it's come to, we could've stopped it in it's tracks if we weren't handcuffed in VN....now I'm too old to participate again and most of my childhood friends perished in the war that disgraced America. We have to do it right this time or we'll lose it all!

One who knows the cruel world and the cost of freedom!

written and submitted by

Lenny Liese

"Hands"

submitted by

Susan Tracey

Anyone who has ever tried to get one over on a New Yorker knows
 what I mean. The demons who started this have no idea about the kind of
 people they have taken on.

 But what the terrorists are also counting on is that Americans will not
 have the stomach for the long haul. They clearly know that the coming
 retaliation will not be the end but the beginning. And when the
 terrorists strike back again, they have let us know that the results
 could make the assault on the World Trade Center look puny. They are
 banking that Americans will then cave. They have seen a great country
 quarrel to the edge of constitutional crisis over a razor-close
 presidential election. They have seen it respond to real threats in the
 last few years with squeamish restraint or surgical strikes. They have
 seen that, as Israel has been pounded by the same murderous thugs, the
 United States has responded with equanimity. They have seen a great
 nation at the height of its power obsess for a whole summer over a
 missing intern and a randy Congressman.

 They have good reason to believe that this country is soft, that it has
 no appetite for the war that has now begun. They have gambled that in
 response to unprecedented terror, the Americans will abandon Israel to
 the barbarians who would annihilate every Jew on the planet, and trade
 away their freedom for a respite from terror in their own land.

 We cannot foresee the future. But we know the past. And that past tells
 us that these people who destroyed the heart of New York City have made a
 terrible mistake. This country is at its heart a peaceful one. It has
 done more to help the world than any other actor in world history.
 It saved the world from the two greatest evils of the last century!

 Nazism and Soviet Communism. It responded to its victories in the last war by
 pouring aid into Europe and Japan. In the Middle East, America alone has
 ensured that the last hope of the Jewish people is not extinguished and
 has given more aid to Egypt than to any other country. It risked its own
 people to save the Middle East from the pseudo-Hitler in Baghdad.

 America need not have done any of this. Its world hegemony has been less violent
 and less imperial than any other comparable power in history. In the
 depths of its soul, it wants its dream to itself, to be left alone, to
 prosper among others, and to welcome them to the freedom America has
 helped secure.

 But whenever Americans have been challenged, they have risen to the
 task. In some awful way, these evil thugs may have done us a favor.
 America may have woken up for ever. The rage that will follow from this
 grief and shock may be deeper and greater than anyone now can imagine.
 Think of what the United States ultimately did to the enemy that bombed
 Pearl Harbor. Now recall that American power in the world is all but
 unchallenged by any other state. Recall that America has never been
 wealthier, and is at the end of one of the biggest booms in its history.

 And now consider the extent
 of this wound - the greatest civilian casualties since the Civil War, an
 assault not just on Americans but on the meaning of America itself.

 When you take a step back, it is hard not to believe that we are now in the
 quiet moment before the whirlwind. Americans will recover their dead,
and they will mourn them, and then they will get down to business. Their
 sadness will be mingled with an anger that will make the hatred of these
 evil fanatics seem mild.

 I am reminded of a great American poem written by Herman Melville after
 the death of Abraham Lincoln, the second founder of the country:

 There is sobbing of the strong,
 And a pall upon the land;
 But the People in their weeping
 Bare the iron hand;
 Beware the People weeping
 When they bare the iron hand."

written by

Andrew Sullivan, journalist

Submitted by

Sue Tracey