A Good Way to Remember

It is the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the places where the attacks took place, in a field in central Pennsylvania, and throughout the country, Americans will remember those who died in the attacks. This is fitting and proper, even for those, like me, who disagree with the strategy and tactics of the military operations, the use of torture on suspects, and the changes in the law that followed the attacks. The dead could have been any of us, and their tragedy is ours.

But it is also important to honor the dead by our actions. To many this means supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the troops caught up in those conflicts. To others, including me, it means something different and more profound. It means changing our way of life to avoid (as much as possible) direct and indirect support for the use of terror as a tactic, wherever it occurs.

We in the West, not just in the United States, depend heavily on oil. Some of the money we spend on oil to fuel our cars, airplanes, and power plants eventually finds its way to terrorist groups and to countries like the Sudan, whose use of terror in Darfur has shocked the world's conscience.

The ability to move freely from place to place is an important component of human liberty and therefore of democracy. Electricity is essential to trade and communication. Our civilization would be much diminished if we did not have these things.

But it is fitting on this day, more than on most, to consider the human and environmental cost of our civilization and resolve to do everything in our power to make that cost smaller—and by so doing, give less indirect support to the use of terror against anyone. We owe this to the memory of the dead, to ourselves, and to future generations.