STEVE SMITH -- What’s up

For nearly a week, we’ve been hearing one of the great mixed messages

of modern times. “Our lives will never be the same,” we have been told

since Tuesday. And since Wednesday, we have been told how important it is

to get back to our normal routine.

Tell me, please, how it is possible to get back to a normal life after

Tuesday. Tell me how to erase the memory of two planes slamming into two

of the world’s tallest buildings from every angle except inside. Or how

to forget the image of people hanging out of the World Trade Center

windows so desperate to live that they would leap onto the concrete

hundreds of feet below.

Tell me how to forget the memory of more than 300 brave firefighters

and police officers who gave their lives trying to rescue total strangers

trapped inside the towers. Tell me how to forget the orphans and

single-parent homes created by the monsters who chose murder, suicide and

cowardice over decency.

Someone tell me, because I cannot possibly get back to my normal life

until I get some answers.

And tell me how to explain this to my children. My children, who

haven’t watched television in more than two years and don’t have the

images to which their peers have been exposed. My children, who were only

shown carefully selected still photos of the New York disaster on my

computer, only after Cay and I determined that we’d rather they hear the

story from us than from the juvenile rumor mill. That is the same rumor

mill that prompted one of our carpool kids on Tuesday to skip the “Hello,

Mr. Smith” and leap right into, “Did you know there’s a plane with a bomb

headed for Los Angeles?”

Return to a normal life? What a laugh. Who among us will ever be the

same? Who among us will ever fly again without even the slightest thought

that the flight could be diverted by madmen with weapons as puny as box

cutters?

Who among us will no longer hesitate to report the duffel bag that has

been sitting unattended too long in one spot? Who will not think twice

before visiting a federal building or take a second look at anyone

appearing to be even remotely of Middle Eastern descent?

That we are now reliving the early stages of the Japanese American

discrimination of World War II is one of the great tragic echoes of the

terrorist attack. America has more than 3 million people of Middle

Eastern descent; people who thank God for their presence on American

soil. People who work and live and play and salute our flag just as any

natural-born American would. Their only crime is the color of their skin

and hair and the features on their faces.

And while the American Red Cross schedules the blood donations of the

more than 700,000 people who volunteered Tuesday, their deeds are erased

by the actions of the sick minds who seek justice from the innocent here

in America. Sadly, it is those misguided hatemongers who have been chosen

by the media to be the subject of what now passes for news.

I have not yet spoken to a single person who did not have some

connection to the World Trade Center, however remote. For some, it may be

a past visit to the observation deck on the top floor or the drink they

had at Windows on the World, the restaurant and bar also at the top.

For others, such as my brother Michael, who used to be able to see the

towers from his home across the river in Brooklyn Heights, it was the

hours he spent on Tuesday driving strangers in his car to the Red Cross

to donate blood or his neighbor who arrived home dazed and confused after

walking from Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. His neighbor’s only

misfortune that day was to be an employee working on the 26th floor of

the south tower, the second one to be hit. How can we live a normal life

with these constant reminders of what a slim thread we’re all hanging by?

I’m tired of people telling me to get back to my normal routine. It is

exactly that mentality that led us to weakness and complacency after the

attacks on our embassies and on the USS Cole only 11 months ago. Remember

the Cole bombing? Seventeen sailors died and 39 were wounded after that

suicide attack. The mastermind then was the same evil man believed to be

the mastermind now. But we wanted so much to get back to our normal

routine, to avoid any disturbance in our comfortable existence that we

failed in our duty to protect one another.

No, this time we have to forget about getting back to our normal

routine and get serious about the cost of our freedom. You say my life

will never be the same? Bring it on.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers

may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.