by jwillis@bellatlantic.net
(Jim Willis & Nicole Valentin-Willis/Tiergarten
Sanctuary Trust)

As written September 11, 2001

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 allow 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 the 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
lost a loved one.
This page done with permission
from Jim Willis
Who has given permission to share.