Making Sense of 9/11

Re Ten Years After, September

I appreciated the article by Rev. Laurence DeWolfe which contrasts with the huge quantities of cant spilled out in the North American media around Sept. 11. The author rightly decries the wars of vengeance that followed, but what happened in response to the murderous attacks on the United States—or rather on iconic symbols of its economic and military power—was worse than vengeance. Vengeance is visited on perpetrators of crimes, but this response has been visited in large part on tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. What is particularly sickening is that these wars have been promoted by so – called statesmen and enthusiastic hordes of their supporters, who loudly proclaim their adherence to one or another form of Christianity and cite God as their inspiration. The parallel to the Crusades of the Middle Ages is striking.