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Below are two articles that were printed shortly after September 11, 2001.  You may find them intellectually stimulating for content as well as for their style.

The Witch Hunt

Bob Herbert. "The New York Times." December 3, 2001.

Twenty years ago The New York Times ran a story out of Buenos Aires that mentioned a woman who was "small and wiry and full of hate for the Argentine government." The woman told how men had broken into her house five years earlier and taken her adult son away. Three months later the men visited her family's newsstand and took away her daughter. There was a lot of news in those days about "the disappeared" in Argentina, the thousands of men and women abducted by state security forces who spent years hunting and killing suspected terrorists in the aftermath of a military coup in 1976. The Washington Post, in an article in 1982, said: "After the military takeover, armed forces officials admit privately, the operation slipped completely out of control. Human rights groups charge that not only terrorists, but also thousands of other persons suspected of supporting them, or simply suspected of knowing them, were picked up — as were families and bystanders — and brutally disposed of." A friend of mine who spent some time in South America in the 1990's and who works at The Times now said, "In Argentina, friends told me how people would disappear and never come home, and their families never knew what happened to them. And — like here now — the press had no list of names, charges, etc. And I actually thought at that time of how lucky I was to live in a country where that would never happen." The United States is not brutally disposing of suspected terrorists and people suspected of knowing them. But it is on an incredible witch hunt, fueled, as witch hunts always are, by incredible fear. The public is predisposed to give the government a free hand in its search for terrorists. Just do what you have to do. But a criminal-justice club wielded without restraint is all but guaranteed to spread its own form of terror, bludgeoning the innocent right along with the guilty. At the direction of the president and the attorney general, more than 1,200 people have been rounded up as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. But only a tiny number of those arrested are suspected of having even the remotest connection to terror activities. The dragnet has mostly yielded traffic violators, petty criminals, people who have done unsavory things with credit cards and people guilty of nothing at all. In hundreds of cases the authorities have withheld from the public the names of those detained for allegedly violating immigration regulations. We don't know if they're guilty or not. We don't even know precisely what they're charged with. What we do know is that this kind of secrecy can lead to the worst kinds of abuses. It's a recipe for tragedy. And then there are President Bush's military tribunals, proceedings that — incredibly — could impose a sentence of death by a vote of just two-thirds, possibly in secret, and with the accused having no effective right to appeal either the verdict or the sentence. Can I get a vote of 6 to 3? Done! You're guilty. Take him out and kill him. Can that possibly be the American way? If you don't want to drag Osama bin Laden to the U.S. for a circus of a trial, fine. Shoot him in his cave. Bomb him. Whatever. He's a war criminal on the loose and a genuine threat to kill thousands more at any time. But if you're the United States of America, and you're going to start arresting people and bringing them to trial, you have to give them fair trials. And before you start executing people, you have to try to make sure you're separating the guilty from the innocent. This is not a principle that evaporates because the populace is angry and frightened. The rounding up of Japanese immigrants in the early 1940's was not the answer to the mortal threat of World War II. And the indiscriminate seizure and prosecution of Middle Eastern people in the U.S. and overseas will not now make us safe from terrorism. We have a choice. We can fight and win a just war against terrorism, and emerge with the greatness of the United States intact. Or, we can win while running roughshod over the principles of fairness and due process that we claim to cherish, thus shaming ourselves in the eyes of the world and — eventually, when the smoke of fear and anger finally clears — in our own eyes as well.

We'll Go Forward from this Moment

Leonard Pitts. Miami Herald. September 12, 2001

It's my job to have something to say.

They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering. You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard. What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together. Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae --a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though --peace-Ioving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God. Some people --you, perhaps --think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN

Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from aTom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future. In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US

You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish. So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started. But you're about to learn.

-Leonard Pitts Jr. -Miami Herald -September 12, 2001