LAST EDITED ON 09-13-01 AT 01:13 PM (EST)

An ancestor of mine authored the following words:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I mention this because in this terrible time we face many challenges; we must trust the government to respond correctly to these heinous and cowardly acts of war against our nation; we must allow that our military forces, if so directed, exist to perform dirty, horrible tasks when such action has been deemed appropriate and requisite by means of our laws and our Constitution; and we must face the fact that worse horrors may yet ensue.

And we must recognize that in the eyes of these terrorist organizations this has always been a holy war. Our objective must and will be to destroy their ability to make war on us; what decisions will be made about how to best accomplish this I cannot guess. But what we cannot do is allow their belief in their holy war to dictate to us a like belief about this war, for us this can and must certainly be a war to protect and ensure the continuing existence of our nation, of government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

This horrible tragedy has only just begun. The desire for revenge burns in us all. But revenge cannot be our goal.

"If the race of man should be left naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few individuals might linger, but in a year would become worse than monkeys." (Samuel Butler, "Erewhon")