"Letter from New York" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Letter from New York

Circulating on the Internet is a letter from a New Yorker directed at the people of the red states. She speaks bitterly of the stupidity of the people who voted Bush in for the next four years, decrying their unconscionable endorsement of his obscene Iraq war and tragic domestic politics. Her voice is fearful. She talks of witnessing the Nine-Eleven attack, and worrying daily if her city will again be a terrorist target. She challenges the red states to understand the ugliness of the apprehension that visits her every morning that she awakens to bright blue skies, the consummate natural beauty through which the terrorists flew their hateful mission.

She closed her letter this way. "Is your life at stake? Are you terrified? I don't think you are. I don't think you realize what you have done. And if anything happens to me or the people I love, I blame you. I wanted you to know that."

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the author has received death threats for her missive.

Shortly after reading the letter, I was walking under similar clear blue skies, the kind that aren’t too typical of the Bay Area, what with it’s almost omnipresent Pacific haze. I took a deep breath at the thought that we could lose this. Oh, not that the world wouldn’t survive, but that our world faces such threats as were realized in New York that morning.

The titular experts say another terrorist attack is a when not an if. These are probably the same personalities who volunteer for suicide hotlines.

Of course another attack is likely, especially since we can’t protect ourselves and since we continue to infuriate people around the world through brutally oppressive policies perpetrated by our dictators and corrupt business interests. Infuriate them to the point that they would commit such atrocities.

There is only one thing we can do to secure our future and that is to eliminate the motivations that would prompt such an awful response. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to create a safe global community, something we can never achieve with ignorance and bombs. There is no more urgent priority. Until then our souls will continue to shrivel like those of rats in a shrinking box.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.