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A Fitting Tribute
By Doug Patton
September 9, 2002

A year ago... Has it really been that long? Has it only been that long?

The images, seared into our memories for days on end, then snatched from our view for fear we might somehow overdose on them, are back. This is a week of commemorating the dead, the living, the wounded, the maimed, the helpless and the heroic. This is a week to mourn and a week to rejoice. It is a week for sadness and a week for anger as America remembers September 11th.

Much will be said and written on this, the first anniversary of the unprovoked attack on America. The speculation will continue on the appropriate tribute to those who perished.

Some of us will celebrate the 20 people who somehow managed to survive the collapse of the World Trade Center, or the 63 babies born since 9/11 who will be held and loved by their widowed mothers, babies whose lives go on despite the loss of the fathers they will never know.

Still others will mourn the fate of 3,000 children who knew their fathers but will never see them again.

As we have for the last twelve months, we will wring our collective hands this week and try to imagine how anyone could hate us so much they would destroy themselves in order to kill some of us and - more important by far, in their world - terrorize us all.

On September 11, 2001, Americans were united in the belief that we had been savagely attacked for no good reason. Today, we aren't so sure. Today, we ask ourselves silly questions about "intolerance" and try to embrace and understand Islam.

Islam is very easy to understand: Islam is a brutal, cruel, oppressive religion, and its god is not God. As Franklin Graham said when challenged on his assertion that the god of Islam is not the God of the Bible, "Those weren't Methodists flying those planes into those buildings!"

America is indeed a nation of immigrants, and our system does give freedom of religion to all who come here. But those who fled Europe for these shores 400 years ago were fleeing the very type of religious oppression found in virtually every country where Islam rules today.

Go to your local video store and rent 'Pearl Harbor' or 'Saving Private Ryan' or 'Braveheart,' and as you are watching one of these epics, try to imagine the men fighting Tojo or Hitler or King Edward the Longshanks asking themselves the kind of questions Americans are asking today. Do you think the dying question on the minds of the brave men entombed in the Battleship Arizona for the last 60 years was, "Would they have done this if I had tried harder to understand Buddhism?" A quote attributed to Alexis de Toqueville that "America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great" was prefaced by this statement: "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power."

The United States of America has been a beacon of freedom for more than 200 years. It has produced more prosperity and more liberty than any other system of government ever devised by men. The foundation of that greatness is not rooted in the Koran. It is rooted in the Old and the New Testament. Islam has brought spiritual darkness and political oppression to every country it has ruled. The best tribute to those of all faiths and nationalities who died on 9/11 is to acknowledge that fact.