A call to arms

On the eve of September 11, I listen respectfully to President Obama justify his plans for a military strike on Syria, while the words of Jesus ring in my ears:

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”

It is July 1945, and my father is aboard a naval carrier in the Pacific with orders to invade Japan. President Truman decides to use atomic weapons, which leads to a speedy end of the war.

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”

The middle-school assignment is to construct a poem conveying a message in the fewest possible words. In my childish scrawl, I write: “Guns shoot / Men die / Women cry.”

War is raging, eighteen-year-olds are being drafted, and the teacher who is grading this assignment is raising her son alone, while her husband is serving somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam.

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”

I am lying on a hospital bed in labor. The nurse, who is monitoring the progress of my contractions, wipes away tears as she watches the news on television. President Bush draws a line in the sand launching Operation Desert Storm. Her son is one of the boots on the ground.

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”

Driving to my job at the daily newspaper, I listen to the breaking news story on the radio: Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan have just struck the World Trade Center.

Gathering around the TVs with the other reporters, I watch Manhattan burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through smoke-filled streets. A third jet hits the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading for Washington crashes in a Pennsylvania field.

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”

I go back to my cubicle and get to work. I find a former Army Air Corps mechanic, a Purple Heart recipient who was stationed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the airfield. He told me that he ran to get a rifle in the hangar, and it was hit three times. He said that 200 men died there, and the planes, barracks and hangar were heavily damaged. He also saw the Arizona being bombed. More than 2,000 servicemen lose their lives in the harbor.

“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”