Unite Against Terror

I recently received an email from a group, "Unite Against Terror," formed for the purpose of stating its opposition to terrorism. I knew nothing about the group but left the email undeleted in my files while giving myself time to consider its request that I sign on in solidarity. Only after reading more about it in The Belmont Club did I decide to add my name.

I've now been contacted with this request:

Please send us your 200 word statement explaining why you signed up.

Hmmm . . . well, I suppose if busy men like Christopher Hitchens and Marko Attila Hoare can take the time to do this, then I can, too.

But I'm going to cheat a little on mine by quoting something that I said on September 11, 2002:

One year ago on a late Tuesday evening, I finished teaching my graduate conversation class, caught an Osan bus home, rocked my two-year-old son to sleep, turned on the television, and saw a huge passenger plane slam into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and explode into an enormous fireball. Within seconds, janitors and executives, secretaries and managers, waitresses and cooks, people who had been drinking a cup of coffee or chatting with a co-worker or mentally preparing for another work day, were leaping from the flames and plummeting, some hand in hand, for a thousand feet to the sidewalks and the streets and certain death. Then, a second plane, into the South Tower. Another horrendous fireball. More bodies falling in a gruesome rain. Then, the thundering collapse of those two massive skyscrapers. Finally, ashes and silence.

That moment of silence was necessary, but its time is long past, and that's why I signed on.

I have no illusions that Islamist terrorists have any interest in what we think, so I don't expect much impact on them. What I do hope is that the various 200-word statements explaining why people signed on will serve to counter those on the hard Left who are effectively allied with the Islamists. I say this because, as Wretchard points out, "many of these authors are men of the Left."

It's about time that they spoke up.