"Let's Roll" Lady Liberty

The idea that we all live in a global community has been dismissed as naive rhetoric. The acute differences both at home and abroad regarding military action in Iraq have only reinforced that view among those who would look forward with dismay.

The events of two short years ago in the skies over America should serve as a constant reminder that the world is indeed a small place and we are all connected.

September 11, 2001 forever changed our world and the one in which our children will live. It was a terrible moment in human history - not solely in the history of the United States. The immediacy of mass communication ensured that all of humanity was implicated in a sustained moment of collective shock and mourning.

However, if the history of the United States has taught us anything it is that out of the ashes of tragedy can rise a greater good. The legacy of 9-11 should be a recognition that we all stand together - not as nationals of a particular country but as members of the human race who aspire to, achieve and defend freedom in every corner of the globe.

On that morning, I was 90 miles from the twin towers in Monticello, New York. I had just arrived for work when the secretary came rushing out saying that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. The immediate thought we all had was that a small Cessna had lost its course. Further reports soon made it clear that there was a coordinated attack taking place in the skies over America.

Upon scrambling to the only television in the office - I was confronted with an image which I knew instantly would live forever in my memory. The towers still stood but they were smoldering. The image was a wide shot of lower Manhattan taken from across the East River in Brooklyn. In the foreground was the Statue of Liberty. She stood untouched. In the background, the towers were in flames and black smoke filled the sky.

A few moments later, the first tower collapsed and the feeling in the room was one of shock mixed with a profound sadness that had not yet turned to anger.

For the briefest of moments, there was no more beauty in the world. However, what followed after has become just as etched in my mind as an important aspect of that day.

Perhaps the most important.

We were all brought together. Strangers on the street spoke to one another in a shared moment of grief. Professional rivalries were forgotten. We were brought together in a bond of sadness yet one buttressed by resolve and determination. The dust would clear. The rubble would be removed. The dead would be buried.

Humanity would endure.

President John F. Kennedy’s words of almost 40 years ago were appropriate reminders, "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal."

I had been wrong in my initial feeling that the beauty of the world had been extinguished. We later learned of the passengers on United Flight 93 who - under the battle cry of "let’s roll" - took control of that aircraft and diverted it from its intended target. They did this in the full knowledge that they were going to die. And yet, in facing that fate, they still managed to find within them the strength to save others. They sacrificed themselves for the benefit of their loved ones, their nation and their world. In that magnificent and heroic instant of life meeting death, they were profoundly and sublimely human.

The small monument in a field near Shanksville, PA is the one reminder of September 11th that deserves a visit from all freedom loving people wherever they live. It reminds us that we are all part of the human race and that love - of family, of freedom, of humanity - is a force no man-made weapon can extinguish.

Now that grief and anger have given way to perspective, I find myself returning to that single image from that day of the Statue of Liberty standing tall in the harbor - undiminished and unbowed.

She reminds us of a better future to be forged from a time of conflict.

She stands for us all.