Harm None?

Osama bin Laden should die. I’m sorry, but there just is no other way. All the pain, all the suffering, all the death. Even with the Karma that will come haunt him, he still deserves to die.

Adam Mayblum's e-mail letter: "The Price We Pay"

A story told by one of the survivors of the World Trade Center.

Just one reason. There.

Yes, the United States came together. Yes, we are now stronger as a people. But still, bin Laden should die.

I had a friend who is a New York Fireman. Need I say more…..

Glory in the Glare
A story about a fire fighter….

Rudy Giuliani

"Sixteen hours had passed since the Twin Towers crumbled and fell, and people kept telling Rudy Giuliani to get some rest. The indomitable mayor of New York had spent the day and night holding his city together. He raced to the scene as the second plane hit, watched human beings drop from the sky, and nearly got trapped inside his makeshift command center when the south tower imploded. Then he led a battered platoon of city officials, reporters and civilians north through the blizzard of ash and smoke, and a detective jimmied open the door to an old firehouse so the mayor could revive his government there."
Mayor of the World

Why am I sharing these thoughts? It’s simple. These web pages are just a few of the things that touched our lives. That changed them forever. Harm none? Okay, so, I won’t be off hunting bin Laden myself. (Although when my husband and I went shooting the other weekend, we did have targets with bin Laden’s head in the middle, and lets just say that if it were actually him that we were firing at, well, we would be a LOT richer…..)

Would you like another reason bin Laden should die?
Go visit this page. If you do not visit any other pages, at least you should visit this one. A Memorial

Or Tribute

Still not satisfied? Maybe I am still not rational enough to make a good argument. Maybe it is just something that I feel in my heart and even in my head. Does this make me a bad person? Will this come back to haunt me? No. September 11 will haunt me. Forever. I will always remember where I was that day. At school. Giving tests to my senior English students. We moved the TV to my room and watched in horror. I don’t think it really sunk in for my students. They were all 17 or 18 years old, but they grew up in small town USA and nothing ever really affected them. Not even this. They cared, but the fear, anger and pain that I felt was missing with them. I will not understand that. And for them, bin Laden must die. Their innocence should be protected. Their safe lives should be upheld. The terror and the pain should not be something anyone should ever have to live through again. It should not happen to anyone. Anywhere. Ever. And yet bin Laden DARED to cause it to happen here. In our homes, in our lives, in our land of freedom. How dare he taunt us. How dare he hurt us.

Some good points are made in Pagans, Wiccans, and War By Frances Donovan (a.k.a. Okelle)

Finally, I want to finish off with

We’ll go forward from this moment

Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald

We'll go forward from this moment

It's my job to have something to say.

They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals. IN PAIN

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.

As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.