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Cowards
Published September 2001

Guy Wheatley
The Texarkana Gazette

I've heard people refer to the attack on the World Trade Center as a cowardly act and the perpetrators as cowards.  Others answer saying that these misguided men were willing to give up their lives for something they believed in and you can't call them cowards. My response to that is an unprintable phrase, for which I will substitute "balderdash." I unequivocally call them cowards. There is a universe of difference between the motivation of a brave man facing danger and a coward committing suicide.
Shortly before 10:00 a.m. on Sept. 11, these philosophies came face to face on United Flight 93. The differences are startling.
Let's take a look at the hijackers. They were running away from a world they didn't have the courage to live in. Their actions were as selfish as they were ignorant. They elected to spend their time on earth skulking in the shadows letting their envy of those with the courage to live life turn to hate. They gave up nothing leaving this world. Lacking the strength of character to establish their own morality, they relinquished their personal sovereignty to ignorant, evil men. They were promised personal rewards in the next life and were willing to spread death and misery to thousands of others to get it. Theirs was an act of spite, not courage.
Osama bin Laden is almost undoubtedly the agent behind the attacks. Shortly after coming to power, the hard-line Taliban government assured the world that they would eliminate terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. Despite these assurances, they harbor Osama bin Laden. The Taliban has excelled itself in demonstrating a lack of moral backbone. One of the first moves these "brave" warriors made was to brutalize their women, forcing them to wear veils and refusing to allow them to attend school or work. They stopped all education other than extremist indoctrination and cut off all contact with the outside world. You can be sent to prison in Afghanistan for owning a television. The decisions they've made and the actions they've taken have created a nation of starving people living in stone-age conditions. The people of Afghanistan are not supporters of the Taliban. They are the first victims. The Taliban has brutalized all within their reach that dare to see and acknowledge the truth. But they don't have the courage to face the consequences of their actions. Instead, they point their envious fingers at America and try to lay the blame on us. The purveyors, of this perversion of Islam, would have the world believe America's wealth derives from the suffering of the righteous.
The perpetrators of this mindless destruction and their sponsors lack the courage to take credit for their actions. They have crawled from their holes in the ground, proclaiming America's weakness. They boast of great victories to come and fantasize about a cowering America, paralyzed into inaction. It is not America's weakness they are counting on. It is America's strength of character. They know that we have the military might to reduce the hills of Afghanistan to an uninhabitable, glowing, radioactive wasteland. But they know that America will not sacrifice the innocent, in a mindless thirst for vengeance. So, they slither back into the nooks and crannies of the Afghan hills using the innocent Muslims of their own country as human shields.
America, by her very existence, repudiates the warped values the zealots teach. Our measured responses to past atrocities demonstrate our determination to react appropriately, but not over react. Perhaps our greatest weakness is the inability to comprehend the magnitude of the evil we face. Those who celebrate the murders of September 11 will learn, to their great sorrow, that we more fully understand the score.
Also on flight 93 was another way of life, the American way of life.
It is the way of life that produced people like Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Mark Bingham, and others whose names we don't yet know. They weren't following the demented ravings of a fanatical mad man. They individually and freely chose their course. They took a vote and decided to act. We've seen photographs of some of these heroes in happier times. The pictures document people living life to the fullest, surrounded by loving families. They had much to live for. They didn't leave this world willingly. They left it bravely, defending others. They are America.

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