Thursday, September 13, 2001

Cold war mentality makes no sense
Nation has a choice to use old solutions or create a new world
by Matt Colglazier
Skiff Staff

We have passed over into death’s dream kingdom. No longer innocent. No longer real.

Our struggle for power, that is our attempt to hold power, has been diverted, blown up. Nothing is left, except the feelings of death, the taste of death that lingers on our tongues and burns our eyes.

Could it be that we have made a mistake? Have we misjudged where we stand in the world? What has happened to our grip? What has happened to our lives?

Power is the force that moves lives. Power is a web. Power, like a spider web, cannot be wiped out with one bug or one missile, one bomb or one threat.

Our notions of power must change. The modern paradigm is one of cause and effect. They have a missile, we have a missile. They bomb us, we bomb them back.

A cold war mentality of power no longer makes sense. We must move beyond the belief that we are strong because we have the most bombs or missiles or tanks.

These things do not, and have not, protected us against terror. What protects us against terror is a pervasive solidarity with other people, an ongoing dialogue of who we are and what our responsibility is to each other.

Death is still on our tongues. The debris and dust on people in the streets of New York make them look like walking body outlines.

It’s as if we are made of chalk, easily blown away by the breath of terror. We must agree that power is no longer built in bomb warehouses, but in the minds of men.

Pure terror is in the mind. Enough so that it causes men of “resolve” to plow missiles made of our own bodies into our own buildings.

On Tuesday the World Trade Center was reduced to rubble in such a breath.
I am 20 years old and afraid of the world I live in.

I fear the terrorists that resign themselves to mindless acts of horror. I’m scared that our response will be just as horrible.

I’m scared that the mangling claws of war will once again scuttle across the globe and take with them the lives of the future, will once again burn the eyes of children and then be silent. Will once again explode on the television screens and make our lives like an audience in a never ending play of death. All this I fear.

It feels like there is no help for these fears. Fear, like power, rises in flares. It cannot be destroyed. It covers everything like napalm and burns. It burns everything.

I no longer want to live in a world that burns in the night, a world where armies march over lands and when they leave there is nothing left.

My hope is that the world does not end in a whimper, or that we choose to end it in a bang.

My hope is that the strands of power are pulled from their spindles and wrapped around the hearts of people that care for the world. The people like those who chose to run back into burning buildings and save what they can of the world they grew up to think was beautiful.

We have a choice in the next few days and weeks. Will we decide to solve new problems with old solutions? Or, will we work to dig out a new world from the rubble of our hearts, minds and bodies?

My hope is that the fear of the past few days can be harnessed into an overwhelming call for peace, a picture of beauty, courage and strength in the face of tragedy.

Matthew Colglazier is a junior English major from Fort Worth.
He can be contacted at (m.s.colglazier@student.tcu.edu).