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Day of Infamy, Pt. II
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Business New Haven
9/17/2001
By: BNH
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The nation's 30th President, John Calvin Coolidge, did not leave us with many words to live by. Mainly, he did not leave us with many words at all. (Famously, at a White House dinner party, a bejeweled matron informed Coolidge that she had wagered that she could induce the President to utter at least three words aloud. "You…lose," replied the taciturn native son of Plymouth Notch, Vermont.)
But Silent Cal, as he was known, did produce at least one memorable pronouncement: "The business of America," he said, "is business."
Tiny, independent little Business New Haven is not about to weigh in on the state of the globe. Those of us who work here debated, fiercely, how or even whether this edition of our publication might confront or even acknowledge the horrific events of September 11. That the deadline of our biweekly publication to go to print was the very next day, constrained our internal debate.
But we could not ignore what happened in New York and Virginia.
We acknowledge that, from our vantage point, we can't begin to solve the worldwide riddle of assigning responsibility for this monstrous act, or recommend how the United States might most judiciously respond. We know, as do you, that how we feel about our tenure on this planet is forever altered. Our grasp of mortality is fragile.
The business of America - it is truer now than ever - is business. And the epicenter of global commerce and finance was, until September 11, not Zurich, but the World Trade Center in New York. As we write this, it has been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble.
We also know, as do many of you, of individuals who are presumed to have been in their offices at the World Trade Center when the first hijacked American Airlines flight impacted at 8:40 a.m. on that dreadful Tuesday. We pray for their lives, and we pray for their souls.
Beyond that, tiny little BNH can offer just these thoughts:
• On the evening following the terrorist attack, President George W. Bush referred to the assault as "an attack on freedom." He was correct, and this act will surely abridge our freedoms. Curbside baggage drop-off and 60-minute-before check-in for domestic flights is now a thing of the past. Perhaps that's a "convenience," not a "freedom." But as air travelers in Seoul, Tel Aviv or Johannesburg have grown accustomed to security personnel toting automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing German shepherds, so now will we. When security butts heads with freedom, security usually wins. Americans consider it a birthright to travel freely and unimpeded around their own nation. That birthright is no more.
• Perhaps the most internationally flavored U.S. city of its size, New Haven is home to dozens of businesses owned by Arab-Americans - from the little Aladdin restaurant on Crown Street to night-owl fixture Mamoun's to Caffé Adulis on College to countless retail operations. We urge readers to remind themselves that the acts of September 11 were committed by a handful of individuals, not a group or ethnicity.
By virtue of where they live and work, our Arab-American business colleagues identify themselves as Americans first, and Arabs second.
Connecticut confronted and, we believe, surmounted a signal moral challenge when "profiling" practices in municipal police departments such as Trumbull's were brought to light - and remedied.
The moral impetus and legal infrastructure that redresses such injustices is woven into the American soul - and now, it appears, makes Americans worldwide a target for those who hate and fear the principle of free thought and expression, and equal treatment under the law.
Mindful of the forced internment of Japanese-Americans from 1942 to 1945, or the travails of African-Americans to claim a rightful place at the American social and economic table, we acknowledge that the United States' record on civil rights is flawed. But we also observe that it continues to improve, year by year.
This may be its sternest test. God help us to identify and punish the authors of this infamy. But may He also grant us the wisdom and forbearance to remind ourselves, every day, that we are all His children - whether we know him as Allah, Jehovah or Jesus.
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