My immediate response upon hearing of past Tuesday's event's was one of shock and horror. I felt,and still do feel, as if I should be doing something to help. It was all too much to take in, and,so, I write this to let my emotions flow. I believe that the population of the United States first felt anger. Desire for revenge clouded the hearts and souls of many. But, the thing about your first response , is that you can't always trust it. You feel like you need to respond immediately, and so you do. But you respond without thinking things through or even putting the facts together. I am writing this only after I am sure I know what is in my soul.

Many of my peers in school who are feeling a great swell of patriotism believe that the answer to all our problems is to simply "blow Afghanistan up." I, along with, hopefully, most others know that this is not the answer. Even young children are taught that "two wrongs don't make a right," and,so, I am baffled as to why our highest government officials don't see that. Do they truly believe that the innocent civilians had any say whatsoever in this attack? I don't see how they can honestly say that they do. So why are we even contemplating bombing these people? Is it the United States' way of 'getting back'at whoever did this to us? Are they just trying to set an example for other countries...not to mess with us? Do we really want to set this example for other countries?

In my mind, if we bomb the Afghanistan civilians, it will be looked back on as a despicable act of murder. We have already seen horrible things done to innocent people not only in other countries, but, also, our own -- Nazi concentration camps and Japanese interment camps. About the Afghanistan bombings -- we should not want children to learn about this in History class someday, just as we learn about the Holocaust now. Thousands of innocent people died in our country on 11 September, and I do deeply feel for the families of those people. But is bombing innocent civilians in Afghanistan just because their government might somehow be involved any better? Would not us attacking civilians there be just another act of terrorism?

Nikolas is 11 years old and the son of an MIT alumna.

Back to expressions

Back to education