CommentMax
Six Months: The Good and the Bad
Steve Farrell
March 28, 2002
It has been six months and two weeks since the Sept. 11. attack on American soil, when Islamic thugs, who hate our culture, hate our liberties, hate our religious values and hate our friendship with Israel, took the lives of thousands of innocent Americans.
Sept. 11 was a sad day in American History.
Sure it was. But sad isn't always all bad. There is always an upside.
1. The strain of war, the heartbreak of catastrophe, the crisis of an enemy attack has brought out not just the worst but also the best in human nature, yielding greater thinking, greater faith, greater heroism, greater sacrifice, greater love, greater unity and greater patriotism than we've seen in America in a good long while. Wars can do this. This is good.
2. Many of the terrorist thugs who perpetrated this unprecedented attack are no longer with us. And although some will call it callous, the world is a safer, freer, more loving place as a result of justice being meted out upon these wicked few. This is good.
3. The world is not yet free of every terrorist, not by a long shot. This is bad. Nonetheless, for those terrorists who survive, the surprising resolve and strength of the United States has given them pause, causing many of them to alter their busy lives of plotting against innocents to busy lives of being fugitives, or to lives filled with disquietude, detention, deprivation, disease and death – the very things these goons in gowns once inflicted upon others.
Joining those who have already met their maker, these fleeing fugitives have found out that the eternal law, "crime doesn't pay," is proven true, sooner or later. This is good.
4. As for those collaborator cutthroats – the mass-murdering Saddam Husseins of the world – they, too, have been put on notice that their day of judgment is coming. This, too, is good.
For all of the above and more, we can say with confidence, "Sad isn't always all bad." Sept. 11 marks a day of catastrophe, but it also marks a day of awakening for millions of Americans and a day of reproof for bad guys.
Well, so there we have it. Bad guys can do terrible things against good guys, and to their utter frustration good comes of it. And perhaps it is a law of nature that man shall be refined in the furnace of affliction, not by a series of uneventful walks in the park.