Preface

For most people living in the United States today, there will always be two Americas—the one before September 11, 2001, and the one after. People will contrast a time of peace with a time of war, a time of security with a time of fear, a time of complacency with a time of action, and a time of carefree existence with a time of mourning. From the moment the first of four hijacked airliners hit the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., roughly 30,000 innocent civilians working there became soldiers in a war they were not trained to fight and for which they were thoroughly unprepared. They were unexpectedly indoctrinated into unimaginable horror and asked to muster the kind of courage they had never known they possessed.

Within hours, the country was transformed. New York City and Washington, DC, where another plane had struck the Pentagon, suddenly didn’t seem so far from Los Angeles or Chicago. After all, Americans lived there. Besides, if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. Vendors quickly sold out of American flags, which became ubiquitous across the land on houses, cars, T-shirts, and lapels. Taking a cue from the United States Congress, whose members stood hand-in-hand on the steps of the Capitol Building that September night and sang "God Bless America," sporting venues made the singing of the song part of their games, alongside the national anthem and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." When 343 New York firefighters, 73 police officers, and other emergency personnel died trying to rescue others from the Twin Towers, people gained a new appreciation and respect for the jobs they do across the nation, and they became the new American heroes.

At the turn of the last century, W. E. B. DuBois wrote of the "double-consciousness" of African Americans, who seemed to live with one foot in two worlds. Since September 11, at the dawn of the 21st century, Americans of all races and walks of life have learned to live with their own double-consciousness, as they have tried to go about their normal lives while remaining vigilant of enemies living among them. Americans have always assumed— perhaps naively—that immigrants see the United States as a refuge, that those who come here from abroad cannot help but love this country and value the freedom and opportunity promised in Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. On the morning of September 11, Americans were rudely awakened to the startling reality that some whom they had welcomed from abroad had used their open society to destroy them. That reality is inescapable for New Yorkers, who daily pass makeshift memorials to the dead and see, when they look downtown, what Bruce Springsteen calls an "empty sky" where a familiar landmark used to stand, their beloved skyline forever altered. The sense of loss is palpable across the nation, where so many people kissed their loved ones good-bye that morning, never to see them again. Americans’ sense of security and invulnerability was severely shaken that day, as the nation and 80 other countries lost more than 3,000 of their citizens, whose only crime was showing up for work.

The speeches contained in this book, most of them given between September 11 of 2001 and 2002, address the concerns of pre-9/11 America and reflect upon the terrible events of that day and its aftermath. Although other issues—particularly the economy, stem cell research, and human cloning— were also significant topics of conversation and debate during this period, September 11 is mentioned in some context in nearly every speech delivered after that day, illustrating the extent to which this tragic event has affected American thinking about numerous issues.

The book’s first section is devoted to speeches that directly address the terrorist attacks on the United States. New York Governor George Pataki, the Reverend Galen Guengerich, President George W. Bush, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, First Lady Laura Bush, historian Jonathan Fanton, and Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani touch on several common themes as they encourage citizens of New York and the nation, console the grieving, analyze the aftermath of the attacks, and inform the public and the world about the state of the nation and its policies in the new war on terrorism. Praise echoes throughout several speeches for ordinary citizens who displayed extraordinary courage and selflessness on September 11, including New York City rescue and relief workers, those who provided aid in the days, weeks, and months following the attacks, and the passengers on Flight 93, who valiantly tried to overcome their hijackers, causing their plane—possibly bound for the White House or the Capitol—to crash in a field in Shanksville, PA. More than any speaker here, Mayor Giuliani—Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001—embodies the resiliency and determination of his city and the nation during this crisis in his address to the United Nations. As he reminds the foreign dignitaries how many of their countrymen call New York home, he portrays the city as a shining example of America’s strength through diversity, the very pluralism so despised by the terrorists. Many speakers point out that America’s greatness must be measured in the power of its ideals of liberty and justice, not in its wealth or the height of its buildings, and Shaykh Kabbani discusses how those principles are in many respects congruous with true Islamic ideals. In addition, Mrs. Bush alerts the nation to the oppression of Afghanistan’s women and children by the Taliban, with whom the nation had gone to war on October 7 in response to the September 11 attacks.

All of the speeches in the second section on character and heroism were delivered in 2002 and express views that are either colored by the events of September 11 or commemorate them. Astronaut "Gus" Loria lauds members of what Tom Brokaw has called the "Greatest Generation" at a gathering commemorating the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima. Loria compares the marines of nearly 60 years earlier with firefighters at Ground Zero, who hoisted a flag on this latest battle site as a sign of hope and eventual victory. New York Lieutenant Governor Mary O. Donohue urges schools to teach character and virtue, pointing to the spontaneous acts of kindness performed by Americans across the country in response to the 9/11 attacks as examples of virtuous behavior. Newly minted Harvard graduate Zayed Muhammed Yasin caused great controversy when he announced his speech’s title would be "My American Jihad," but Yasin surprised many when his definition of jihad turned out to be fairly consistent with American values. In a speech given on the 4th of July, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell asserts that the principles of liberty and equality upon which the nation was founded continue to shape the American character, and no act of terrorism can destroy them. The final two speeches, by Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld memorializing the passengers of Flight 93 and the victims of the Pentagon respectively, were given on the first anniversary of the attacks and praise the patriotism of those who were among the first casualties of the new war on terrorism.

Immigration, the subject of the third section, became an extremely important topic after September 11, although reform of American immigration policies had been of great concern in the months before the attacks as well. Dan Stein, who represents an organization advocating reduced immigration into the United States, describes ways of curbing illegal immigration and easing the transition of those already here legally into American society. The issue of the immigrants’ civil rights is addressed from several angles, first by labor leader Linda Chavez-Thompson, who champions the cause of undocumented workers, then by immigration scholar Mark Krikorian, who insists that the right to immigrate is not a civil right and that the U.S. should devise criteria by which to exclude certain individuals from immigrating. Wade Henderson next asks that Americans respect the civil rights of immigrants already here, despite the actions of the nineteen September 11 hijackers, while John Ashcroft considers immigration restrictions from the standpoint of national security.

The economy, which had started to slow during the spring of 2001 and was seriously crippled by two man-made disasters—the September 11 attacks and the corporate scandals involving Enron and WorldCom which followed—is the subject of the fourth chapter. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, speaking barely two weeks before the attack on the World Trade Center, refers in passing to "tremors on the economic landscape," which seems in hindsight to be an eerie foreshadowing of the full-scale corporate earthquakes that would rattle the nation before the end of the year. By the time Senator Tom Daschle spoke before the Center for National Policy in January of 2002, the combination of the terrorist attacks and the Enron bankruptcy scandal had cost thousands their jobs and had shaken investors’ confidence in American industry. While Daschle addresses the unavoidably negative effects of September 11 on the economy, he blames the Bush administration for the policies that precipitated the Enron collapse and the fraudulent actions of Enron’s accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. The spring of 2002 brought yet another corporate scandal, this one involving WorldCom, which would put the administration further on the defensive and prompt officials like former SEC chairman Harvey Pitt to launch investigations into corporate misconduct. In his speech in late June, Pitt sounds as exasperated as the American public and describes strategies to clean up corporate America. A month later, in an impassioned speech, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney calls for greater accountability and more severe penalties for CEOs whose criminal actions result in their companies’ demise, the unemployment of thousands of workers, and the near disappearance of their employees’ retirement funds.

The issue of food safety, to which we turn our attention in the fifth chapter, had been hotly debated since the 1990s, largely due to outbreaks of E. coli and Salmonella in the United States and mad cow disease in the United Kingdom, and interest in this subject continued in 2001. In an April speech, Janet Abrams and Laurie Girand call for stricter enforcement of food safety measures by the FDA and USDA. One year later, Gregory Conko accuses many of overstating the dangers of chemically treated and genetically engineered foods. However, when the September 2001 terrorist attacks were followed in October by the appearance of anthrax in mail sent to various media outlets and government offices, many more people began worrying about America’s ability to prevent an attack of bioterrorism through our food supply. Congressman John Dingell, for instance, fears that our nation’s food inspection service is insufficient to stop a bioterrorist attack, and although Elsa Murano of the Food Safety and Inspection Service does not directly mention September 11, she discusses, among other things, the concern for "biosecurity"—safeguarding against contamination by naturally occurring and artificially introduced pathogens.

The final section in the book looks at two revolutionary scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to greatly benefit humankind but which pose serious ethical and moral dilemmas: stem cell research and human cloning. President Bush’s decision in the summer of 2001 to allow limited research into the use of adult stem cells—as opposed to embryonic stem cells—for curing diseases was met with favor by many but with concern and even outrage by others. Carl Feldbaum and Congressman James Langevin find no moral conflict in the use of stem cells and believe the medical benefits from that research far outweigh the risks. Others, such as scientist Stuart Newman, while not opposed to stem cell research or human cloning in principle, do fear the irresponsible use of cloning technology to harvest organs or embryonic stem cells (the most easily molded cells in the human body). Right-to-life advocate Nigel M. de S. Cameron, however, opposes all attempts at human cloning which, he believes, is an act of the utmost hubris that violates human dignity.

We would like to thank those who generously gave us permission to reprint their speeches here. We would also like to thank Sandra Watson, Rich Stein, Eugene F. Miller, and Gray Young for their assistance in producing this book.

December 2002