THE INHERITANCE

An hour into the wilderness the dawn silence was broken by a noise from the valley below. Still shrouded in Autumn mist, the foothills I’d recently traversed were hidden in a cloud. While I sat on the hiking trail setting up my camera and focusing on a dew covered spider’s web I heard the noise again. Sitting motionless I craned my neck to identify the sound. This was one of those times when I wished I’d better understood the woods I so much loved to wander. For all I knew it could have been a wolverine - or a wildebeest.

There it was again. Louder this time. Whatever was making the noise was following the trail I was on. It almost sounded like the staccato call of a loon, but it wasn’t. I was convinced it had to be an exotic bird of some sort when it crested the nearest hill and ran through the fog toward me. It was only then that I could identify the call: laughter. It was the laughter of a little boy riding on his father’s shoulders as they ran through the forest at dawn. I was relieved and yet somewhat puzzled. How could I have mistaken that sound?

In the days that have passed since the terrorist attacks in New York and D. C. there hasn’t been much to laugh about. Instead there has been a lot of talk about the loss of American innocence and how the world will never be the same again. For the past two weeks the airwaves have been smeared with patriotic jingles and the war whoops of self-righteous politicians readying their white horses for the next great crusade. I’m no pacifist, and I understand that the would-be tyrants and kings of the world are quick to exploit weakness. So we retaliate. But my concern is that this eye for an eye form of justice we’re about to unleash may blind us to the possibility that we could be doing more to harm world peace than to promote it. Judging from the rabid tone of the American media it appears that we’re more concerned about revenge than in allowing peace to emerge from out of the rubble.

We have enemies but we’re blind to why they hate us. It’s time the people of the United States realize that it’s not just religious fanatics and terrorists who hate us and that all of our enemies are not insane. But if we seek to silence the critics of America’s global domination by bombing them back to the stone age it isn’t likely to work. Most have little left to bomb and nothing left to lose.

We all need to take a long and critical look at the legacy we will leave the next generation. Will they inherit a nation that has spent another century sustaining its hegemony through the use of overwhelming force, or a country that has made a genuine effort to live up to the ideals of its creed?

Despite the horrible tragedy we’ve recently experienced all is certainly not lost. Innocence is a renewable resource. Every time a child is brought into this world unjaded, unprejudiced and uncorrupted we are given another chance to create a saner, nobler world. The world is indeed a different place since the events of September 11. Whether that’s for the better or the worse is yet to be seen.