An Unfathomable Tragedy

Abstract

At 8:48 A. M. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, American Airlines flight 11, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles, hit the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. This deliberate crash, followed by further jet crashes into the Trade Center's south tower, the Pentagon, and rural Pennsylvania, not only destroyed symbols of U. S. capitalism and military might, but also assaulted the very foundation of America. Thousands of lives, dreams, and families were destroyed in this senseless and utterly incomprehensible carnage. Glued to the television from the moment this terrible story broke, one hoped that this awful movie would end, but unfortunately it was real. What kind of hatred motivates someone to perpetrate such heinous acts? David Kennedy, a Stanford University historian, summed it up: “Amid the din of destruction, nothing was more eerie and unsettling than the silence of our attackers and [their] studied refusal to specify their demands. Whoever our adversaries are, their objectives are not measured in terms of geography, trade, or any of the usual markers of political rivalry. They seek not simply to destroy but to demoralize, not to seize territory, but to sow chaos, not to conquer, but to cripple and corrupt. They are targeting not only lives and property, but also our most fundamental values, including our commitments to personal liberty and to the institutions of an open society.” The thought that many of these terrorists were living among us for years, participating in our ways of life and enjoying our freedoms, sends shivers down the spine. Perhaps we ate in the same restaurant, flew in the same plane, and may even have had conversations lamenting the sorry state of airport security. The nation is angry and the administration is, understandably, preoccupied with the punishment of those who planned, supported, and nurtured these acts. Justice must prevail, but our motive should not be revenge. Terrorists hide among the innocent, and the innocent will suffer from collateral damage. Millions of destitute young men and women in the world are angry at their miserable living conditions. Engulfed in hopelessness, they view the West and our ways of life as the cause of their desperation. These terrible events are a wake-up call for the “haves” of the world not to ignore the plight of the “have-nots.” Wiping out terrorists will not remove the scourge of terrorism. Education has largely conquered ignorance and science has improved the quality of life of all humanity. But we also need to learn tolerance of all faiths and creeds. We must be vigilant against any discrimination and retaliation against innocents who share the faith but not the values of the faceless terrorists. In science, we do not ask about the beliefs of the experimenters. The Nobel Prize Committee did not consider the religion of Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian, before awarding him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking work on real time chemical reactions at the atomic level, or H. Gobind Khorana, born to a Hindu family in India, for deciphering the genetic code, or J. Michael Bishop, the son of a Lutheran country preacher and co-discoverer of oncogenes with Harold Varmus, himself born to Jewish parents. Science is non-denominational and “sans frontiers.” We must keep our faith in human goodness and keep striving to reveal nature's secrets for society's benefit. The best way to show our solidarity with the victims of this tragedy is focus on what we do best—science! Unlike Hamlet, upon being visited by the ghost, we do not want to “wipe away all trivial fond records” from the edifice of memory, because then we will have handed victory to the perpetrators of the horrible crimes of September 11, 2001.