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On September 11, 2001, I was met first thing in the morning at my classroom door by a student. “Why do they hate us?”

I took a breath. “They don’t.” It is not personal, I explained. It is an act of terrorism meant to bring their experiences home to America.

It would be too much to expect a teenager in a small town, even a very smart one and she was very smart, to appreciate what the US had done in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world to further our own interests at the expense of local populations. Too much to understand why it might feel justified to the terrorists, especially I don’t want anyone to feel justified in killing others. The attack felt personal even from three thousand miles away. The broader world had made itself known in our small town. My student was not only distressed and maybe scared, she wanted to understand. How to explain that? How to provoke understanding without compelling anger, without demanding vengeance or suggesting forgiveness?

The mostly Saudi men who attacked our country had reasons for anger about our economic, military, and political interference in the region. Embracing hatred, they sent a message that reflected the violence they experienced at home by bringing it to our front door, to symbols of our power. It would be many years before I felt it was safe to point out the obvious, that they chose military (Pentagon), economic (Twin Towers), and political (White House) targets representative of American misuse of power. Make no mistake, we aided and waged secret wars to our economic advantage. We chose sides. Our actions killed. We’ve done that many times and in many places.

What I did explain to that student on that terrible morning is that the terrorists had nothing against us personally, only against the United States. Murder is never right.

“This is our moment. Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?” said Utah Governor Cox, a moderate Republican who made encouraging civil debate a signature cause.*

*Sadly, even Cox later chose to feed headlines.

About the time I was talking to that student all those years ago, the second tower came down and “passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy.” Heather Cox Richardson counted the towers as two trophies. The interference of our nation in world events and at the expense of local populations is not an excuse, though perhaps we might recognize it as a reason. It’s not an acceptable reason to me, but what does it say about us if out immediate reaction is to “pay them back in kind”?

Twenty years ago last week, a random group of Americans chose to be collateral damage in a spectacular act of terror. “The 33 passengers and 7 crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all.” And, Bush continued, “The terrorists soon discovered that a random group of Americans is an exceptional group of people. Facing an impossible circumstance, they comforted their loved ones by phone, braced each other for action, and defeated the designs of evil.—former President Bush

For those too young to recall, when the jet passengers recognized that their plane was headed toward the White House with the aim of crashing into and destroying the “People’s House” as the only alternative, they crashed the plane with the loss of only their own lives.

It is cheering to read that Bush is now celebrating the instinctive reaction of Americans to turn to one another instead of to bigotry and bias. The world was on our side that day, people throughout the world watched in horror, sent offers of support shared grief, and prayed for our collective welfare. A measured response was not Bush’s reaction at the time. Bush quickly pivoted to vengeance. It’s a pity he used that horrific event to achieve his own ends, advancing bigotry and hatred to advance himself and sustain his presidency. His popularity jumped, and our nation was saddled with the explosive anger he promoted at the time and directed toward people and entire nations with no connection to the events of 911.

“Virtually every person of note in American politics has, rightfully, condemned the horrific killing of Charlie Kirk and expressed their deep concerns about the growing incidence of political violence in the United States. Wherever we stand politically, we all agree that he should still be alive. … We can mourn Kirk. We can send prayers to his friends and family. We can take stock of the gravity of this event. We can — and should — do all of this and more without pretending he was something, as a public figure, that he was not.” from “Charlie Kirk Didn’t Shy Away From Who He Was. We Shouldn’t Either.”

Without saying a word against Kirk, it’s possible to criticize the use of his death to violate the First Amendment. It’s also appropriate to recall the divisiveness and hate he promoted when evaluating his legacy.

I hadn’t paid the least attention to Kirk until his death. Lines I found quoted in a meme that appeared in my Facebook feed seemed so dreadful I could not believe they were authentic. I researched. I have always done this—my due diligence about public figures. Yes, he said those things and more. Like Jamelle Bouie, I am deeply shocked and sorry that our nation experienced another assassignation of a public figure; and I also recognize that the recent killing was of a ofttimes hate-monger. He was a hateful person and his murder is awful. Both can be true at once.

I would argue that anger is inevitable, but hatred is not. Anger is emotion, but hatred must be chosen, and is always self-defeating. When Lincoln faced the destruction of our great Union, he pleaded for us all to be guided by the “angels of our better nature.”

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Lincoln envisioned the return of peace at the end of war. We have that ability to access our better selves and the better impulses of our nation. We are still a powerful nation and capable of choosing to hear all voices. Embrace peace now. It is the only justifiable course of action.

Make no mistake, when we vindicate the “removal” of an entire population, as Netanyahu and his cronies pursue genocide in the Middle East, we are not doing what anyone’s faith or human decency can justify. Such is murder, condemned and deserving of that condemnation. Even in our silence as a nation, much less our support, we will have chosen hatred over humanity.

That will never go well for the majority of people. Win or lose, in war there will be a net loss of life, opportunity, treasure, time for the majority of human beings who survive.

Big companies will profit from sales of military hardware, and wealthy men will find doctors willing to invent bone spurs to keep their own sons out of the action. Ordinary citizens will die. Well-intentioned young people will go forth as heroes and return in caskets. Brain power and money will be squandered on military power instead of food and medicine and a better life for all people. Land and structures and people will be mangled. Ordinary citizens will die fighting for their ideals and simply for being in dangerous places they never meant to be dangerous, while those whose ideals concern only money and power will sit comfortably and safely throughout. The wealthy have no loyalty to our nation however high they wave our flags. Safe in their gilded towers, they believe they owe no one but themselves, and their children will dance on our graves. Because they can.

When we hate our enemies, they win. The ones with money generally do. In war that is always true.

Most of us feel otherwise. Our duty is to our morality, our god, our families, our sense of decency and generosity of heart. Most of us would not willingly kill another human being. Most of us will step up when need is great. My dad was proud of his military service, of his purple heart, of his country’s victory in WWII. He saw action and like most soldiers who have seen action do not shout and brag, my father refused to speak of those experiences. He told his children stories about K-rations and leave in south England, about arriving home to the Andrews sisters singing. He never told me about warfare as he experienced it, about the concentration camp he helped liberate—none of that. He carried a small folded paper in his wallet with a list of place names, but he would not explain about the place inked in red.

Every philosophy and religion that has ever been condemns murder, some few define “murder” as a specific kind of act. When killing is done in anger, or from pride or greed or selfishness, such killing is murder. That is true, I think, even when the act uses citizens as weapons of war. When it is done to save our life or the lives of others, we recognize that need to protect and preserve. We honor it, but the killer still suffers from that forbidden action. I would argue that it is an unnatural, universally forbidden act to kill another human being. Both military and civilians suffer from memories of wartime destruction. I rarely saw my father angry, but the veins in his temples pulsed as a fellow diner bragged about what a great time he’d had in the war, which he’d spent in San Diego. “That was not the war I experienced,” he said afterwards as we walked home. I have rarely met a soldier who said otherwise, and many veterans admit to lifelong struggles resulting from necessary actions committed in honorable circumstances. We name that PTSD these days. It isn’t something we can wish away.

Keep that in mind as the drums begin beating for war. When we go to war it is with nations, but it is people who die. It is ordinary, good-willed people who will die on both sides. Find the better angels. Determine that no one’s children die in another war. Not ours. Not theirs.

Choose peace. Peace is also our heritage, our right and rightful goal. Not appeasement or acceptance of unfairness, but not anger either. Not vengeance. Not blame or fury acted out. Hear the drum; do not respond.

Peace. Like that rose. Insist. Peace is the harder path these days, never the glamorous or exciting journey, but it is righteous, even so.

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It was not my intention to drift to war in this post. But killing has been on my mind and suddenly it was all over the news last week. In fact, I went quite a different direction the first time I began this post last week. Accidents happen, and I accidentally deleted my original post and recreating it led to quite a different conclusion. But I stand by that last line.