Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Last Friday evening, on the way home from the gym, I listened to an NPR program entitled “Fresh Air.” On this particular segment, they had a young woman who had fallen in love at 14, married at 19, had two children, and then divorced. On 9-11, a few minutes after nine, she received a phone call from her ex-husband. He was on the 104^th floor of the North Tower. He told her he was not going to make it out. He asked her to be sure and tell their two daughters that he loved them, and he said he still loved her and always had. He then asked to speak to her husband. When her husband got on the line, he requested him to be Dad to his children. The Dad assured him that they both would be. Then the line went dead.

On September 11, 2001, a Middle Eastern group of 19 middle-class, educated Arabs, who were also radical Muslims and members of the terrorist group, al-Qaeda, which was headed by the Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden, initiated a bold, coordinated air attack on America’s capitalist and military epicenters. They not only were diabolically successful, but they used America’s own airplanes to attack us, and to wreak havoc in New York, Washington, D.C., and America, in general. None of America’s sophisticated defense systems with all kinds of multi-billion dollar firepower and detection capacity was prepared. Without going in to great detail, here’s a compressed recounting of what happened on that fateful day.

IN NEW YORK: At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11, departing Boston for LA, crashed at roughly 466 mph into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99, killing all 81 passengers (five of whom were hijackers), nine flight attendants, and two pilots.

IN NEW YORK AGAIN: To demonstrate not only their ability to do as they willed, but also their contempt for our defenses, they waited to strike a second time, seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175 out of Boston and also bound for LA, crashed at about 590 mph into the south face of the South Tower of the Trade Center, between floors 77 and 85. All 65 passengers, including the five hijackers and nine crew members were killed.

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center represented capitalism at its richest, and most powerful.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Thirty-four minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77, on its daily transcontinental flight, from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport, which had also been hijacked, deliberately crashed into the Pentagon, headquarters of the world’s most powerful military. All 64 people on board the aircraft, including the hijackers, were killed, as were 125 people in the building.

PENNSYLVANNIA: Flight 93 was United Airlines' scheduled morning transcontinental flight across the United States from Newark International Airport, with 7 crew and 37 passengers aboard, of whom four were hijackers. The Boeing 757 aircraft was hijacked 45 minutes after takeoff and put on course to D.C. It subsequently crashed into a field 80 miles from Pittsburg during an attempt by some of the passengers to regain control of the plane, after being alerted by cell phone of what was going on in New York and Washington,. It is widely presumed that the intended target was the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.All on board, including the four hijackers, were killed. This flight was the only one of the four prevented from reaching its hijackers' intended target. It’s important to note that it was passengers on board that saved us from an even more humiliating attack.

Back in the Twin Towers in New York City, thousands of occupants began trying to find a way down multiple floors and smoke-filled stairways. As they were fleeing down one side of the smoke-filled stairways, there was a strange sight on the other side: Firemen going up one side of the stairs with 50 to 75 pounds of gear and tools on their back, to do what firemen do. The fleeing workers going down knew first hand what the firefighters were heading into. They yelled, “Good luck, son.” “Thank you, boys.”

Three hundred forty-three firemen gave their lives while in the buildings. (Let us pause a moment to remember them.)

That the two most important symbols of the American system – its economic system and its military might – were compromised by 19 Arabs with only five and dime, store bought weapons, but with a brilliant strategy masterminded by Osama bin Laden, was a breakdown of incomparable proportions for America. Our response was out of fear, and our motivations were of revenge. We reacted not with a superior intellectual system, or a more informed form of government, nor a more enlightened religious faith, but like a wounded bull driven to strike out because of pain and fear.

Prepared for Old World ways of conducting battle that took place between nation states, we were unprepared for terrorist cells positioned around the world in friendly and unfriendly sites. We were ready to declare “WAR,” but against what nation and people?

Our airports shut down and reopened days later as police states, with terror-advisory color codes being broadcast every five minutes. A vast new department of Homeland Security was devised; a worldwide system of torture prisons, beginning with Guantanamo Bay, were built. Some of our U.S. Constitution’s noblest principles were shredded. Our reprehension at the notion of torture of prisoners of war was violated, and the ideal of habeas corpus was tossed.

Knowing that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, supported by U.S. oil money we paid the Saudis for oil, we attacked the backward nation of Afghanistan, where once we had financed bin Laden himself, in a war against invading Russians.

But bin Laden was not anywhere near through. In a move that was even more diabolically clever, he successfully tempted us to believe that Iraq was aligned with al-Qaeda, and possessed weapons of mass destruction which they were prepared to use against us – even though Saddam Hussein had a record of fighting and hating al-Qaeda. We put Afghanistan on hold and in March of ’03, we invaded Iraq.

That’s the reality we face. The two wars that George Bush and the American Congress launched in retaliation for the 9-11 attack have turned out to be the longest in American history, among the costliest, and most inglorious. We should hang our heads in shame.

Ten years later, Afghanistan is a quagmire which we cannot win; eight years later Iraq is a pseudo-democracy. Both of their governments survive on U.S. taxpayer money, real or borrowed – a house of cards that will collapse when either our troops or both are withdrawn. And the financial costs of a war financed by loans from China have resulted in our economy needing life support, with foreclosures and joblessness threatening to sap the very breath we breathe.

Our vaunted CIA was found not only to be incompetent but capable of gross evil. And the FBI failed sadly when needed badly.

Our response to 9-11 was almost fatal. We have become a nearly bankrupted nation that tortures innocents and disregards its own Constitution.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Where our own security is not directly at stake, our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose….

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action – other than in response to direct threats to our own security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

Only 12% of Americans believe the U.S. should be the only super power in the world. Seventy-five percent reject the notion of spending more on national security.

And only weeks before we invaded Iraq, in February 2003, I wrote the following “Guest Opinion” for the News-Press:

“The fact that America is posed to launch a war against Iraq is proof positive that we learned nothing from 9-11. How in the name of God could we be so eager to inflict mass horror upon the people of Iraq after we suffered a tragedy that will pale in comparison to the losses we will cause? We can say that it’s Saddam Hussein we’re after, but make no mistake: It’s the people of Iraq who will suffer.

The last Gulf War is proof positive of what war really is, even though we were fed mountains of propaganda about the precision of our strikes and the minimal “collateral damage.” To have listened to then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, it was as if the Gulf War was simply a minor inconvenience for the people of Iraq. Only later we learned that our own government’s estimates are that 158,000 died as a result of the war. Forty thousand of those were soldiers and 13,000 were civilians who died during the war, and the balance as a consequence of the hostilities.

That says nothing about the rightness or wrongness of Desert Storm. Rather, it says a whole lot about how little trust we can place in our government to tell us the whole truth. 158,000 deaths is not precision…it’s not a clean war…it’s mass horror…fifty times the loss of 9-11. And our vaunted free press? They were kept at briefing stations with colonels pointing to maps and using gross euphemisms to cover what actually was happening.

As a new war approaches, we are being fed the same disinformation. This too is supposed to be another “clean” war. God help us for such gross rape of the truth! There is no such thing as a clean war. War is not hell: It’s mass horror. After 9-11, we should know better. And rather than bellicosity, why in the name of heaven wouldn’t we devote every effort possible to enabling the U.N. to do its job and save the lives of as many of the Iraqi people as possible. Rid the people of Iraq of the megalomaniac Hussein, but don’t destroy the village to save it.

This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. The reality is that lying by presidents is a bipartisan practice. Democrat Lyndon Johnson lied about Vietnam, Republican Richard Nixon lied about Watergate, Republican Ronald Reagan lied about Iran, and Democrat Bill Clinton lied about his sex life. And George Bush?

He has mastered the art of saying one thing and doing another. His compassionate conservatism is one huge prevarication. The only thing compassionate about his administration is the rhetoric. His actions are taking us into war, while at the same time destroying the environment, increasing the suffering of the poor, starving our educational enterprise, ravaging the criminal justice system, and making a mockery of family planning around the world. And all the time driving our nation into bankruptcy to do it.

There should be no pride that our government is preparing to attack Iraq. Waving the flag or celebrating over the horror we can inflict on a country one-tenth our population, which has not yet recovered from our last attacks, is not a sign of greatness…it’s bullying. For the most militarily powerful nation in the world to be able to destroy a nation with minimal ability to defend its self is not and will not be a great military victory, but a tragedy of enormous civilian proportions.

Even worse, God’s name will be invoked to sanction what we do. We can pray for the lives of American and Iraqi soldiers and civilians to be spared, we can plead for sanity and compassion, but what a travesty it would be to pray for God to bless this nation if we commit this horrible crime of mass horror. There may be a God who kills and maims and destroys, but it’s not the God we seek to know and re-present.

I mentioned at the start about the “Fresh Air” radio program I heard on Friday night. Another woman was interviewed and said that she and her husband fell in love at 16 and were 50 years old on 9-11. He called from work to tell her he was on the 105^th floor of the South Tower and could not find an exit in the smoke. (We know now that all the floors above the entry point of the plane were doomed.) She asked him if it was hard to breathe, he paused and said, “It’s okay.” She began to hear a noise and her husband began to repeat, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Then silence.

As you may know, Ed Elrod, our Sound Engineer, was a first responder in New York in the days immediately following 9/11. He left his home in Indianapolis late afternoon 9/11, and once at Ground Zero served as a communications specialist for the Indiana Task Force One.

His wife, Carol, has kept a scrapbook of photos of Ed's group, which included search dogs, firemen, medical personnel and structural engineers. She also has newspaper clippings, e-mails and letters of commendation. Several thousand people turned out to welcome the Task Force home when they returned to Indianapolis by chartered bus. (Carol’s collection is available on a table in the Community Room.)

[1] A sermon presented on the 10^th Anniversary of “9-11,” September 11, 2011, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, 2756 McGregor Blvd., Ft. Myers, FL by the Rev. Dr. Wayne A. Robinson, minister.