When I Boarded the Midwest Express to Washington, D.C., on September 11

When I boarded the Midwest Express to Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, at 8:00 a.m. (Central Time), I had no idea that the definition of power on planet earth would be rewritten within the hour. I read the paper, enjoyed a nice breakfast, and felt quite secure. Why not! I was a citizen of the "world's last remaining superpower." This "superpower" was pouring into its "Defense" budget some thirty million dollars an hour, nine thousand dollars a second to keep me safe. As we neared Washington, the pilot announced that Reagan National Airport was closed and we would be heading back to Milwaukee. Within minutes he reported that the airport in Milwaukee was also closed and we were to land at the closest airport, Columbus, Ohio.

Cell phones and television at the Columbus airport told us the news, that our superpower status was a myth. In a superpower, the president would not have to hide out in Louisiana and Nebraska because of "credible evidence" that he could not return to the Capital; the congress would not be running from the Capitol Building; schools and businesses throughout a superpower could not be forced shut; I would not suddenly be looking up into a sky where no airplane would dare fly. These were the facts of this new world order. The Defense Department could not defend us -- or its main temple, the Pentagon -- from a hatred and a mode of power that we had never known before.

It was not Pearl Harbor revisited. The bombers had left no return address. The instinct to retaliate with bombing is an anachronism. Fewer than twenty men had brought us to our national knees and raised the biggest question facing us in the twenty-first century, posed by a little girl and reported in the press: "Why are they killing themselves and killing all those people?"

The Guilt Gap

The government's answer was that we are good and love freedom and these people are bad and hate it. That vapid answer came from an arrogant national culture that has lost its talent for healthy guilt. The hatred that could so easily paralyze our nation has a history, and as Teilhard de Chardin said, "nothing is intelligible outside of its history."

Why do the deprived of the world hate us so?

To give an honest answer to the little girl's question, to start some meaningful reflection and move out of the morass of American jingoism, I look to some thoughtful witnesses and diagnosticians of humankind. The first is J. Glenn Gray, an intelligence officer with the army in World War II. In his book The Warriors, Gray wrote: "If guilt is not experienced deeply enough to cut into us, our future may well be lost."

Frances Moore Lapp is our next witness: "Historically people have tried to deny their own culpability for mass human suffering by assigning responsibility to external forces beyond their control."

And next I dare turn to words I wrote in 1993: "The absence of pity is the root of all evil." I continued:

Can we sit now in our First World comfort at a table with a view of the golf course, and ignore starvation in the Third World and joblessness and homelessness in our cities? The prophets of Israel would answer "no." In Jeremiah's words, there is no hiding from the effects of guilt and morally malignant neglect: "Do you think that you can be exempt? No, you cannot be exempt" (Jer. 25). Injustice will come home to roost, whether in wars of redistribution (the most likely military threat of the future], or in crime and terrorism, or in fax-reaching economic shockwaves. The planet will not forever endure our insults. If the prophets' law is correct--and the facts of history endorse it--we will not be exempt.

And finally, Count Cavour of Italy said that if we did for ourselves what we allow our country to do in our name, we would be jailed and hung as scoundrels.

These were not the voices heard in the National Cathedral on September 14. Jeremiah was not invited to say to the leaders of "the most powerful nation in the world": "Acknowledge your guilt!" (Jer. 3:12)

Our Guilt and This Stunning Hatred

Affluence and comfort dull the optic nerve. The poor world sees us differently. Draw a circle and cut me out of it and I will see sharply what goes on there. The attackers pinpointed the reasons for their outrage. They struck at what they saw as the twin towers of our indifference and at our haughty military heart. They see our nation as an arrogant, spoiled five-hundred-pound gorilla that pollutes and then scorns treaties to end pollution, that was built on slavery and practices racism and yet shuns the United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. They noticed that the genocide of black people in Rwanda did not stir us to action. They believe we would have acted differently if Swedes or Irish were having their throats cut. Those outside the affluent circle are stunned at our ability to lock into caricatures of others. We don't say that Timothy McVeigh represented Irish Catholics but the Taliban and bin Laden somehow symbolize Islam. When they see us getting ready to repeat the Soviet madness in Afghanistan, a writer from that land agrees that bin Laden is properly compared to Adolf Hitler and the Taliban are well compared to Nazis, but the people of Afghanistan, with a huge proportion of widowed women are best compared to the Jews in concentration camps. They would love to be free of that tyranny. Those outside our world hate us for ignoring this and threatening slaughter, to be masked as "collateral damage."