I am a New Yorker.  After September 11th almost everyone is a New Yorker but New York is where I was from.  I was born in Manhattan and lived in Queens.  I love the Yankees and grudgingly admire the Mets and figure dem bums will be able to win if they just come home to Brooklyn.  No matter if you are a Atlanta fan or a Seattle fan or if you follow the Tokyo Giants or even horror of horrors don't care about baseball, you were probably a New Yorker on Sept 11.

On that day we were struck and reminded not just how fragile life is but how fragile dreams are.  New York has always been a place where people grasped at the fantasies and made them happen.  The Great Gatsby was a New Yorker.  He made his dreams come true through shear force of will.  New York was a city where they built castles on the clouds.  When there was a low fog over the battery Manhattan was shining towers rising out of the sea.  When there were clouds over head the buildings were pillars holding up the sky or Atlas himself.

The tallest spires of that castle in the clouds have fallen.  The castle is still there and the dreams are still there.  How many times have people rebuilt after disasters.  There are farmers who lose their fields every 5 years due to flood but every time they come back because the soil is rich and fertile and in the time between they make a living.

We have had our flood now is the time to dig out and rebuild.  The land cannot sit idle.  There are people who talk of putting a monument there.  What more fitting monument though that rebuilding.  Rising up out of the clear and fertile soild, higher bolder and prouder than before.  The dream cannot die because of a set back.  The people who lived and worked, loved and died in those buildings had dreams.  They lived in a castle in the clouds and it is our job to rebuild it so that there will always be castles.

There are other duties.  The innocent blood cries out for justice.  Our duty to the past is remember and rebuild, Our duty to the future is to ensure that this never happens again.  Our cause is just and if we are righteous we shall prevail.  I pronounce anathema on the terrorists and all of their ilk.  Death and destruction to those whose only rule and respect is force.  Those who live by the sword shall die by it.  Be they Christian, Muslim or Jew, be they black or white or yellow let them know that all are their brothers and what they give is what they get.

Let us give to them what they have given to us seven fold.  Let them cry out for the mountains to fall on them and let them curse the day they were born.  Then let us show mercy so that are not like them.  When the leaders have been rounded up when the thugs are out of power and old women and children walk the street safely.  Let us force a world without force.  A world were people provide for themselves and no one takes from another without it freely being given.

I have long thought about the sufferings I would inflict on Bin Ladin given the chance and I have heard ideas that redefine inhumane, but crimes like this demand more than years of torture or some ironic death buried beneath rubble (though admittedly it is his likely end).  

I propose that when he is captured that he held in a small room for a sufficient period of time.  I want his hope to be up and for him to be sure that help will come.  Then I want him taken to the top of the freedom tower. 250 stories built on top of ground zero and I want him to see New York in all of its eternal glory.  Then I want him taken to Afghanastan, to the hills that hid him,  I want him to see them lush in green with boys and girls running in the grass.  I want to take him into the capital and walk him past the McDonalds and lead him into KFC for a 2 piece combo with a side of hummus.  Then finally to see his great grandaughter the new governor working to petition the US for statehood.

In essence I wan to crush his spirit by doing to Afghanastan what we did to Japan after WWII.  I want it rebuilt better than he could imagine but in the image of what he hates.  I want to turn what he loves into what we have and what he hates, and then tell him how if it weren't for him it wouldn't be possible.  Then when he is cursing his God and pulling his beard we shoot him.  We let him die as he attains his inner self.

I am a New Yorker.  I know hopes and dreams.  I envision the future and remember the past.

-Mark Lively
Oct 30,2001