AN OPEN LETTER TO TERRORISTS

I don't know your name, or names - we may never know who you are - so I
can't address you personally. Today, you killed several thousands of our
friends...perhaps not people who we knew personally, but people like us.

People who worked hard to make a living, who loved someone, who were
loved by someone, who worried about making a better life for their
children and grandchildren, who believed in God and the American Dream,
who criticized this country for its insufficiencies and cared enough to
try and change things and ensure a better future, not just for us, but
for the world. People who leave behind scores of loved ones, friends,
pets, neighbors, coworkers, and members of their faiths. Perhaps even
people who derived from your own country and who sought refuge here.
Your act was a slaughter of the innocents.

You are like an insidious cancer that strikes without warning, ravages
bodies, tears families apart, and in the end can never destroy the soul.

You are the ultimate coward.

You may topple our buildings, collapse our communication systems,
disrupt our government, crash our markets, and leave behind the carnage
of bodies, but you will never destroy the soul of America. We made this
country from the bits and pieces of the rest of the world; we took the
best, the worst of every culture and nationality, race and creed, and
made an alloy that may be dented, but not even a trial by fire can melt.

I don't know what God you believe in, or what hateful rhetoric you
espouse, or what your misguided political beliefs might be that allows
you to do what you did today without a fear of eternal damnation. I only
know that you may win a battle or two, but you will never win this war.

We have the entire history of the world on our side, and no dictator,
despot, or madman has survived as long as America has thrived and
prospered. If you accomplished anything at all today, it was to give
America a wake-up call, and we will now rise up stronger than before.
You are defeated before you've even begun, there in your private hell
and later in your eternal one. Someday your people may even need our
help, and because we are America, we would respond.

May God bless the friends we lost, their families, friends, neighbors
and coworkers. We will help them rebuild from the ashes. May God
continue to bless America, help her to protect us all, and may she
continue to shine as a beacon of democracy and hope to the rest of the
world.

Copyright Jim Willis 2001
In deepest sympathy to those who have lost a loved one.
Permission to share