[pyrnet] CHAT: Fw: AN OPEN LETTER TO TERRORISTS

["Barb Bowes" <bamb@monmouth.com>]

AN OPEN LETTER TO TERRORISTS
by jwillis@bellatlantic.net (Jim Willis & Nicole
Valentin-Willis/Tiergarten Sanctuary Trust)

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.