Remembering 9/12

September 11, 2001, was what many have called “the day that changed America, ” and tomorrow, as you know, is the 20^th anniversary of those horrendous terrorist attacks. But I don’t remember 9/11/01, for I was living in Japan and didn’t know about the attacks until September 12. 

(A 9/12/01 photo by Frank Becerra Jr., The Journal News)

Speaking in Chapel on 9/12

While it was still Sept. 11 in Japan when the Twin Towers were hit and destroyed, it was after my bedtime and so it was only early the next morning that I heard that almost unbelievable news.

I got up early, as usual, with the intention of spending time on my final preparation for speaking at the regular Seinan Gakuin High School chapel service that morning. Upon hearing the horrible news from the U.S., though, I knew I would have to change my planned talk completely.

Even though I had been in Japan for many years, it still took a lot longer to prepare a talk/sermon in Japanese than in English—and there certainly wasn’t time that morning of 9/12 to make adequate preparation.

I haven’t been able to find the notes for my chapel talk that morning—and I might be embarrassed to see what I said, or didn’t say. But I did the best I could at the time.

After the chapel service was over, I chatted a few minutes with Manabe-sensei, the high school principal. I remember him saying that what he was most afraid of now were acts of revenge by the U.S.—and I agreed with him.

Seeking Revenge after 9/12

On 9/14, Pres. Bush vowed that the U.S. would take military action in retaliation for the terrorist attacks. Then on 9/18, he signed a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the attacks.

Before a month had passed, on October 7 U.S. forces begin bombing the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Retaliation had begun—and Principle Manabe was right: the acts of revenge have been far, far worse than the horrible events of 9/11.

The total number of people killed in the attacks of 9/11/01 is given as 2,997. The total number of people killed in Afghanistan since 10/7/01 is said (here) to be over 240,000. Retaliation ended with roughly 80 times (!) the death toll from the 9/11 attacks.

Leaving Afghanistan in 8/2021

Just a few days more than 238 months after the U.S. began military actions against the “enemy” in Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrew all military service members, other USAmericans, and tens of thousands of Afghan “friends.”

This has widely been called a “defeat” for the U.S.—and Pres. Biden has been strongly criticized for the hectic withdrawal not only by Republicans but by many in his own Party.

The war in Afghanistan might have been considered a success if it had ended in 2002. The major goal had been reached. But the war didn’t end then. It dragged on for 19 more years, perhaps partly (or largely?) because of the military-industrial complex. Some people profited handsomely from the war.  

The bombing in Kabul on August 26 which killed 13 U.S. soldiers and more than 170 Afghans was tragic indeed. And the current danger facing the few USAmericans and many Afghan friends of the U.S. left in Afghanistan is certainly distressing.

But undoubtedly, many more U.S. military personnel and Afghans would be killed in the months/years ahead had the U.S. troops remained.

It is remarkable that there seems to be more outrage over the fewer than 200 who were killed in Afghanistan the last week in August this year than over the average of more than 1,000 a month for the last 238 months!

We do need to be concerned about the oppressed people, especially women—and Christians—in Afghanistan as well as in North Korea, Syria, and many more countries with harsh governments. But one thing is certain: war is not the answer to the problems in Afghanistan or any other country.  

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** Here are some of the helpful opinion pieces I read with profit and recommend to those who are interested in thinking more about this matter.

“Yes, the Kabul withdrawal is a disaster. But Biden made the right decision on Afghanistan” by Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart on 8/22.

This opinion piece by David Leonhardt in The New York Times on 8/25.

Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan by David Rothkopf in The Atlantic, 8/30.

“The Tragedy at Buffalo”: Reflections on McKinley’s Assassination

William McKinley was the third U.S. President to be assassinated—in just 36 years (plus a few months). He was shot 120 years ago on September 6 and died eight days later. What was behind that tragic event?  

Pres. McKinley shot on 9/6/1901

The Making of Pres. McKinley

William McKinley, Jr., was born in Ohio in January 1843. When he was still 18, he enlisted as a private in the Civil War—and 36 years later became the last President to have fought in that horrendous war.

Mustered out of the army in 1865, McKinley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives just eleven years later. After six terms in the House, he served as the Governor of Ohio for two two-year terms.

In the presidential election of 1896, Republican McKinley defeated Democrat / Populist William Jennings Bryan and became the 25^th POTUS. Four years later, he was re-elected by defeating Bryan for the second time with 51.6% of the popular vote, up slightly from 1896.

McKinley’s election was due, in large part, to the financial support he received from the wealthy industrialists of the country. Bryan was the “commoner,” who had the support of the working class but with limited resources. The moneyed class won the elections for McKinley.

In his classic bestselling book, A People’s History of the United States (1980; rev. ed., 2003), Howard Zinn wrote that in 1896 “the corporations and the press mobilized” for McKinley “in the first massive use of money in an election campaign” (p. 295).

McKinley’s Presidency

McKinley’s support by the wealthy paid good returns for them. Early in the second year of his presidency, the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Three years before McKinley’s re-election in 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt as the Vice-President, the latter wrote to a friend, “I should welcome any war, for I think this country needs one.” And, indeed, that very next year (1898) the Spanish-American War began, and Roosevelt was a hero in it.

John Jay, McKinley’s Secretary of State, called it "a splendid little war," partly because it propelled the United States into a world power—with world markets. Indeed, under McKinley’s presidency in 1898, the American Empire emerged.*

Zinn quotes the (in)famous Emma Goldman writing a few years later that “the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists” (p. 321).**

Indeed, the “military-industrial complex” was a reality far before Pres. Eisenhower used that term sixty years ago in January 1961.

Shortly after the brief war with Spain ended, the Philippine-American War started in February 1899 and was still in progress when McKinley was shot and killed.

McKinley’s Assassination

Leon Czolgosz was a Polish-American who, by the time he was 28 years old, believed, probably for good reason, that there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality that allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor.

Early in September 1901, Czolgosz traveled from Michigan to Buffalo, New York, where the President was attending the Pan-American Exposition (a World’s Fair). There he shot McKinley twice at point-blank range.

Czolgosz had clearly been influenced by the fiery, anarchist rhetoric of Goldman (1869~1940). But just as Nat Turner had misused the words of the Bible (see my 8/25 blog post), he misused the words of Goldman, who advocated dramatic social change, but not violence.

Even before McKinley died on Sept. 12, Goldman was arrested and charged with conspiracy. She denied any direct connection with the assassin and was released two weeks later. On Oct. 6 she wrote a powerful essay titled “The Tragedy at Buffalo.”

Goldman stated clearly, “I do not advocate violence,” but wrote in forceful opposition to “economic slavery, social superiority, inequality, exploitation, and war.” And she concluded that her heart went out to Czolgosz “in deep sympathy, and to all the victims of a system of inequality.”

At the end of October, Czolgosz was executed by electric chair—and Goldman continued advocating for the people Czolgosz cared about so deeply and sought to help in an extremely misguided manner.

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* “American Empire, 1898~2018,” my 1/15/18 blog post, elaborates this matter.

** Zinn wrote “Emma,” a play about Goldman that was first performed in 1977. I found Zinn’s play quite informative and of considerable interest. 

Eisenhower, Man of Peace?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower died 43 years ago this week, on March 28, 1969, at the age of 78. At the time of his election as the 34^th President of the United States in 1952, he was a five-star general in the U.S. Army. During World War II, “Ike” had served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

Although I was too young to vote (you had to be 21 then), I remember well the 1956 presidential election. If I could have voted, I probably would have voted for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate. But Eisenhower was re-elected for a second term by a landslide (457-73 electoral votes). Stevenson won only Missouri, by a very narrow margin, and six southern States. In spite of concerns about his health, the popular Eisenhower was sent back to the White House for four more years.

Last month on Presidents Day, June and I drove over to Abilene, Kansas, where we visited the Eisenhower Museum and Library for the first time. We also visited the house where Eisenhower from the age of eight (in 1898) until he left for West Point in the summer of 1911.

I had not known that the Eisenhower family were members of the Anabaptist group known as the River Brethren. His grandfather had been a pastor in that small denomination, which is now known as Brethren in Christ.

The River Brethren, as most Anabaptist groups in this country, emphasized pacifism. So Ike’s parents did not approve of his going to West Point—but they allowed him to make his own choice. And it seems that he decided to go there not because of his desire to become a soldier but in order to get an education. (He was not financially able to go to college without a scholarship.)

Way led on to way, though, and Eisenhower did become a soldier, and a general. He did not, however, forget his religious roots, and as President made some excellent statements about peace.

The Place of Meditation was built in 1966 with private funds under the auspices of the Eisenhower Presidential Library Commission. Constructed of native limestone, the interior contains marble wall panels, walnut woodwork, and brilliant stained glass windows.

There is a church-like building called the Place of Meditation at the Eisenhower Center in Abilene. The graves of Ike and Mamie are inside that attractive structure. Engraved on the wall behind the graves are words from “Chance for Peace,” a speech he gave in April 1953. In that notable address he said, in part:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Eisenhower also spoke highly significant words about peace in his farewell address in 1961. That is when he warned about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. That talk was the first thing I listened to inside the Eisenhower museum last month. The retiring President said,

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Those are good and important words by a military man who probably can truly be called a man of peace.

Note: Eisenhower made an interesting comment to his brother in a letter dated 11/8/54: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt . . . , a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”