Special early release from the forthcoming book
Bad Stuff in the News: A Family Guide to Handling the Headlines,
to be published by SeaStar Books in March 2002

There is a lot of bad stuff in the news these days, from earthquakes to school violence to scary diseases. But there has been nothing quite as bad as what we all saw on September 11, 2001. On that day, we saw two airplanes full of people crash into the tallest buildings in New York City, the World Trade Center. We saw exploding fireballs, huge clouds of smoke, and the buildings fall to the ground in a big pile of ash and twisted steel. Then we saw the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., burning because another passenger plane had crashed into it. And we saw a giant smoking pit in the ground near Pittsburgh, where a fourth plane had crashed. More than 6,500 people were killed in just a few minutes on that morning in what are called terrorist attacks.

You've probably heard that those four planes were hijacked. That means that some very, very angry people used force to take over the airplanes’ controls. You probably asked, like we did, "Why would anyone want to crash a plane? They would kill themselves and hundreds (or thousands) of innocent people!" It’s so hard for all of us to understand and answer that question because there’s a lot about terrorists and terrorism that we don’t understand.

Terrorism happens when people with a certain political cause or religious belief use fear, terror, and violence to try to get other people—usually governments—to do what they want. Sometimes they just threaten to do something bad if they don’t get what they want. But they also can kill without a clear reason, and they don’t care if there are innocent people in the way. That’s because terrorists, the people who use terrorism, are full of big hate.

It's hard to explain big hate. Little hate is easy to explain. People hate spinach and hate getting shots and hate when it snows on the weekend instead of on school days. All those hates are little hates. Really they aren't even hates—they’re just things you don't like very much. Hate is like a fire that burns up everything good inside you. Some people have a hate that has been burning for so long that they don't care if they kill innocent men, women, and children, and they don't care if they kill themselves. When these haters hook up with other haters, and when they get money and bombs and knives and guns, they can become terrorists.

Terrorism has happened all over the world for many years. You may have heard stories about bombs going off in places like Ireland, England, Israel, Africa, and other places far, far away. We’ve been lucky because these awful things haven’t happened much in the United States. But terrorism didn’t begin in our country on September 11, 2001. In fact, other terrorists attacked the World Trade Center once before, in 1993. That time they killed six people and hurt a thousand with car bombs in the Trade Center's garage.

On April 19, 1995, a government building in Oklahoma City was blown up by a terrorist named Timothy McVeigh. His awful act killed 168 people, including 19 children, and he did it because he hated the United States government. He did not agree with some of its decisions and thought that his anger gave him the right to blow up innocent people.

In May 1998, Theodore Kaczynski—who some people call the Unabomber—was put in jail for the rest of his life for sending bombs in the mail for more than eighteen years to scientists because he feared and hated the things that they were discovering. He thought science was going to hurt our world, but his violence killed three people and badly hurt twenty-nine others.

On August 7, 1998, United States embassies in the African countries of Kenya and Tanzania were blown up by terrorists who hated things that the United States had done that affected their own countries. They killed 257 people and injured 4,074 people. Many of the dead and wounded were African—they were not even citizens of the country that the terrorists hated!

So, as you can see, terrorist attacks have hurt Americans before, and even though they didn’t kill as many people as the attack on September 11, they were still horrible events that show us just how deep and awful hate can be.


Stuff to Understand

After terrorist attacks, people get scared and angry. This is normal and natural, and it happens to just about everybody. In fact, it’s exactly what the terrorists want. They want us to be scared and they want us to stop living our normal lives. We talked to lots of kids after the September 11 terror attacks who were afraid to fly in an airplane or visit a tall building, or who thought that the terrorists were going to crash a plane into their houses. Maybe you were one of those scared people. We were a little scared, too. In fact, we wrote this so that we could all learn how not to be scared.

You might wonder, if terrorists are angry with a government, why would they hurt all kinds of innocent people who don’t run the government? One thing to try to understand is that terrorists usually try to destroy places that have an important meaning to the government and to the country. Most places don’t have that special kind of meaning to millions of people, so most places around you are safe and will stay safe. And the few places in the country that are very famous and mean a lot to millions of people are being protected more than ever by the police and the government.

When a terrorist strikes, it is such an unusual and horrible thing that you are going to hear tons and tons about it on the news and on the radio wherever you go. And you will probably hear a lot of confusing things. One of the most confusing things you might hear about terrorism is that a lot of times this violence is done by people who say they are acting in the name of religion or in the name of God. If God is good, and if religion is supposed to make people kind and loving, how is this possible?

We think that violence done "in the name of God" is the worst kind of violence because it takes what billions of people all over the world think is good and holy and comforting and creates evil of the worst kind. But sometimes people become so wrapped up in their beliefs and points of view, and they’re so sure that they’re right, that they truly believe God wants it that way. They give themselves the power to do these terrible things by saying that God wants them to do it. But only humans choose to kill other humans in this way, not God.

Also, many terrorists come from places where regular people don’t have the same kind of power and freedom that most Americans do. Like gangs that live in cities around us, these terrorists stick together and find ways to create power by scaring and hurting other people. But the ways that they have found are horrible and wrong.

Another thing to remember about terrorism is that, like lots of bad stuff in the news, it’s really bad but it’s also really rare.Terrorist attacks hardly ever happen, even though they are terrible when they do happen. There are lots of bad things in the world that are very rare that don't make you change your life. A few people may have gotten bitten by sharks, but you will still go into the ocean on a hot summer day. Some people have gotten hit by lightning, but you will still go out in the rain. Some people have gotten hurt or died in car crashes, but you will still get into the car to go to the movies. People sometimes break their legs playing sports, but you will still go skiing.

It’s important to be aware of dangers and to try to protect yourself when you can, but you just can't get rid of all the dangers in life. So all of us have a big decision to make: We can hide under our beds all day or we can go on with our lives. It takes courage to go on, but we know that you are brave enough to live your life without always being afraid of the bad stuff in the news.


Stuff to Fix

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed in this world in order to get rid of terrorism, but the grown-ups are the ones who need to work on that. In fact, it’s the biggest and most important thing our government is working on right now, and there are tens of thousands of people all over the country who are helping them to make our lives safer.

There are three things that you need to get fixed though: getting rid of your fear, getting through your sadness, and making your insides good and happy instead of letting them get full of anger and hate.

If you still have fear about terrorism, one really good way to let go of some of it is to talk about your fear with your parents and teachers and friends. When you talk about what scares you, you find out that you are not alone. You are like lots of other people who are also scared about what might happen next. Talking about your fears is like letting the air out of a balloon. It lets the fear just whooshout of you.

When you talk about your fears, you will also find other people who aren’tscared, and they will help you understand a whole lot better than we can just why you don’t need to worry. Sharing your fears with people you love and trust reminds you that there are people who love you and will protect you. Terrorists only win when we feel scared and alone. By coming together with our friends and family, with members of our church or synagogue or mosque, or just with our neighbors, we remember that we are part of something bigger than us and that something will not let us down.

There is an old saying, "Sticks alone can be broken by a child. Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable." You can try this out for yourself. Take one pencil and try to break it. It’s easy, isn't it? Now take five or six pencils and try to break them. You can't do it because the bunch of pencils is so much stronger than just one pencil alone. When people are alone they also are weak and can break easily. But when we are together in communities or families or groups of friends, we are unbreakable. We become a million times stronger than when each of us is are alone.

Even if you’re not afraid, watching all of this bad stuff on TV might make you feel sad. You probably see that your parents are sad. Just seeing all of the sad people you don’t know on TV might make you feel sad! We think it’s okay to feel sad, because sadness is the price of love. When we love and care for others—even people we don’t know—it hurts when they die. It even hurts when they are just feeling down. But it’s better to love people and feel sad sometimes than to not love people at all. If we don’t love others, we will become full of hate—like criminals and terrorists.

If you or someone you know has had a terrible loss in this violence, it’s important that you talk to grown-ups around you about your sadness. It’s the same as talking to them about your fears—it lets the sadness whooshright out of you like air from a balloon. There are many special people who will want to help you do this—rabbis, ministers, priests, teachers, counselors, or doctors. It may take a while to get over the hurt, and so you’ll need to be patient with yourself. And if your sadness doesn’tlast as long as the sadness of your family or friends, that’s okay too. We think it’s very important that you go on with the very big and great job of having fun and being a kid while the grown-ups work on fixing the bad stuff in the news.

There’s one more thing you can do as a kid to help good people win over the terrorists. You can try to keep hate out of you. Since most people believed that it was some Muslim guys from the Middle East who crashed those jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, after the attack some people started to talk about how much they hated Arabs. We even heard about kids beating up Arab, Pakistani, and Palestinian kids and kids who are Muslim. This reaction is mean, unfair, and wrong—it’s verywrong.

Timothy McVeigh was a white guy from New York State who called himself a Christian, and after he bombed a government building, nobody said, "I hate white guys from New York State" or "I hate Christians." It doesn’t make sense to hate a whole group for what just a few people have done. Also, remember that some people that you may thinkare part of a certain group may not even call themselvesa part of that group. It’s not your job or our job to judge others—that’s the job of God (and those people who wear long robes and work in courthouses)!

Hate is like poison to your insides. Hating somebody else is like drinking poison and expecting another person to die. Hate hurts you and kills the best that’s in you, and that’s why you should try to keep hate out of your heart. It may be okay to fight against evil, but it’s not okay to become hateful and evil when fighting for what’s right. Keeping yourself good inside is the first big step to making the world good outside.

Believe it or not, there is something that everyone agrees is good about these awful terrorist attacks. Seeing the worst in bad people brings out the best in good people. After September 11, people came from all over America to help out in New York City and Washington, D.C. Some came to dig and some came to heal, some came to make food and some came to give out clean clothes. These people worked for free and they worked day and night, all because the bad thing had brought out the good in them. Nobody ever wants to see bad things happen, but when they do, it’s very important not to just see the blood and hear the crying. It’s also important to see the helpers and listen to the singing and cheering.

There are lots of great things about living now. You can e-mail friends all over the world. You can get on an airplane and go just about anywhere and get there fast. You can live in big cities with lots of things to do and places to go and jobs to do. You can watch TV and see what's happening everywhere, plus you can even check your math homework on a calculator! Living in the world today has a lot of good things in it for sure.

But living in our modern times has bad stuff in it, too. Terrorists are one of the worst bad things in our world, but as bad as they are, they cannot change the good things. They cannot change the good people and they cannot win and they cannot hurt you. On days like September 11, 2001, it’s hard to believe that the good people will win. But the best news is that God made the world so that there are many, many more good people than bad people. Right now and in all the days to come, good people are getting organized and will find the bad people and protect you from them. Remember Adolf Hitler? Hitler took over Austria and Poland and Holland and Belgium and Norway and Czechoslovakia and France and Yugoslavia AND Greece before America even got into the war, but he still lost big. Bad people usually get a head start on good people, but they never win the race.

You see, the world is made in such a way that when you drop something, it always falls down. That’s called the law of gravity. But the world is also made so that life always wins over death, hope always wins over sadness, and the good people always win over the bad people. The good doesn't always win right away and it doesn't always win without a fight, but it always wins!

Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman, together known as the "God Squad," are often seen and heard on television and radio. They have been regulars for many years on the Imus in the Morning radio and television program. They also have made many appearances on Good Morning America and The News with Brian Williams as well as many other national television and radio programs. Together they are the authors of Religion for Dummies and a number of children's books: Lost and Found: A Kid’s Guide for Living Through Loss, How Do You Spell God? Answers to the Big Questions from Around the World,which was made into a Peabody and Emmy award?winning HBO special, and Where Does God Live?which won the Christopher Award.