(September 11, 2009)

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I just finished making a morning round at the Hospital, where I service my in-patient population, the Crittenton Hospital, Rochester, Michigan. With a cup of coffee in hand as usual I looked for a chair in a nursing station for a brief break. Then I noticed a cluster of nurses around an old TV-set in the station. Unusually there was a quite a commotion and excitement among them. Then I noticed the screen showing a modern looking tall glass and steel building with a wisp of smoke coming from its side. One young nursing student said to me without taking her eyes off from the screen “Its World Trade Center in New York and it was just hit by a plane!” I then remembered that it was the Wall Street structure, a well known capitalist icon, designed by a Japanese American architect and a Michigan resident, Yamasaki, Minoru years back and was once attacked by Moslem terrorists.

This realization of the potential gravity of the event was suddenly reinforced and a chill ran through my spine when I saw a second plane hitting the other of the twin towers. The nurses, who are screaming now, all turned to me for explanation(s). The head nurse said “Hey Dr. Pak, I saw you on a local news channel the other day talking about North Korea, what you think is happening here. They are not North Koreans right? Who are the terrible people? Are we in a war now?”

I said to them with a measure of tremor in my voice that it is most likely a terrorist attack committed by a group of fanatic Moslem Arabians, to whom America symbolizes the evil of western culture. I told them with a firm voice of conviction that there will be three things Americans would do in response to this blatant show of hatred against America; I said;

This represents a grave failure of US intelligence system. A terrorist attack at a broad daylight against such an obvious target should have been detected with ease and prevented or at least a warning should have been issued. Heads will fall in FBI, CIA and others.

We have to understand the mindset of those who hijacked the plane and guided them to the towers, easily sacrificing their lives. Think of what must have gone through their minds at the moments of impact. They are human beings too. During cold war days, every US embassy had a structure called, United States Information Service (USIS). It contained books, magazines, other media services all for the purpose of informing the citizens of the country about the country of United States, history, ideology, people, geography and all that its people stood for. I am convinced that the US will spend billions to establish something f these nature at least at Arabic countries to re-educate its people, youth and clergies about the US. It would be a mammoth enterprise but w need to change our image in the hearts of those fanatic Arabic Muslim youths.

We must stop taking side in the broad Jewish, Palestinian conflict. We must play a fair and objective mediator’s role so as to resolve this historical, ethnic, religious and political conflict. I bet the US government, i.e., Bush administration, then will send a massive contingents of US soldiers to the Israel-Palestinian border separating them and forcing them to learn to live with each other, telling them both; “Enough is enough! Your useless pride, ethnic prejudice and stubbornness are costing thousands of our citizen’s lives! Cease and desist. We will force you to change!”

Unfortunately, none of these predictions of mine on that morning made in front of the bewildered nurses happened.

Instead, Bush led us into Iraq, the head of FBI was given a Medal of Freedom award, Osama Bin Radin is still at large, and after expenditure of billions and billions, and more than 5,000 US deaths not to mention hundreds thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, we are still the target of hatred by the majority of Arabic Muslims and Israel-Palestinian issue had not yet been resolved, and lastly Obama who replaced Bush with the slogan of “Change We Believe In” turned out to be a hollow sloganeer.

Moon J. Pak, M.D.

Chair, US-DPRK Medical Science Exchange Committee (UDMEDEX)

Vice Chair, Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC)