Anger never dies

By DENNIS SMITH
Monday, September 10th 2007, 4:00 AM


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Six joyful summers and six hopeful springs have passed since so many
good people were slaughtered by Islamist radicals in 2001. When I think of the summer games played by the victims' children and the annual spring rituals of their widows and widowers, I take some satisfaction in our human capacity to take life by the hand and go forward.

But I also cannot forget the agony of that day and the profound pain we the living endured as we attended the funerals and comforted the survivors. Indeed, my anger, our anger, is not only a memory. It is a living, breathing, seething thing.

Six years ago tomorrow, we found out there were hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million, radical Islamists bound by a pathetic ideology and determined to have as many of us killed as possible. Nineteen of them made it to our shores, in the worst way imaginable. I lost 343 Fire Department brothers.

Now, my unrelenting anger surprises me. I was never an Ivy-League English professor type, a romantic who thought the world to be inhabited by people who want to get along. I am a fireman from the South Bronx. I have always been a realist. I have witnessed many terrible things in my time. I have been shot at and stoned.

Yet all these years later, I find I am still angry. I'm still surprised. I try, to whatever extent possible, to channel that anger into positive passions. But physically and psychologically, my life has changed.

And there are many like me. My friend and fellow FDNY veteran Lee Ielpi and I worked so many days together on The Pile. We have both kept busy since and, at least outwardly, succeeded. We have tried hard to show them - the terrorists - that they haven't cut deep enough to bring us down.

In fact, despite struggling with a serious medical challenge directly related to 9/11, Lee remains perfectly committed to honoring the memory of his son Jonathan, who was found 93 days after 9/11, directly in line with where the south tower stairs had been.

I, too, have endured the most painful throat radiation possible due to the poisonous air I breathed at Ground Zero, particularly on that first day. But what's done is done. The air came with the territory. They, the terrorists, made us breathe it.

Yet that is only one of the reasons I am filled with rage. I cannot put to rest the questions that pulse relentlessly through my bloodstream.

Why, for starters, do we plop down millions of dollars to see movies featuring Hollywood stars who travel the globe undermining the interests of our State Department and our nation? And, why does our culture publicize Lindsay Lohan's petty addictions with as much passion as it does Osama Bin Laden's murderous intentions?

What have we really learned from the Islamist bombings in Spain and England, and the recent arrests of Islamist terrorists in England and, just a week ago, in Germany? I want answers.

Why do we still let hundreds of unaccounted for strangers enter our country illegally every day, and why do we continue to appoint political hacks to vital positions in our offices of emergency preparedness and homeland security organizations? And why are the many good and honest Muslims in our country letting thugs and killers usurp and stain their religion before their very eyes?

The crack in our Liberty Bell in Philadelphia symbolizes how fragile our democracy can be. And we have far too many political leaders who mistake boasting for bravery.

The future safety of the United States is undeniably tied to the defeat of radical Islam, a corrosive ideology that knows no borders and has no morals.

Yet our own senators want to give sustenance to our terrorist enemies by pulling unceremoniously out of Iraq. Our own senators, evidently, do not know the lesson of the Liberty Bell.

I am angry. Are you?

Smith, a retired New York City firefighter, is author of the book "Report from Ground Zero."