Editorial: Giuliani shows why accolades are fitting

Friday, Dec. 28, 2001 | 9:10 a.m.

Ahalf-hour videotape by Osama bin Laden, likely made sometime within the past month, was broadcast Thursday. The video was full of hate and contained the usual diatribes against the United States and Israel. A Reuters news agency translation also said that bin Laden declared that America's defeat was imminent. This from a man who is on the run and whose al-Qaida network has been destroyed in Afghanistan. Bin Laden also said that the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, which killed more than 3,000 people, were acts of "blessed terrorism." Obviously only someone with as twisted a mind as bin Laden could conceive of terrorism as somehow being blessed.

Bin Laden's sickening remarks were juxtaposed Thursday by the uplifting farewell address of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose term ends Dec. 31. Giuliani chose to give his remarks at St. Paul's Chapel, standing on an altar just one block from ground zero of the terrorist attacks. "You know, our enemies insanely commit suicide to serve some irrational purpose, and they think that we're afraid," Giuliani said. "But the reality is that we're just a few blocks from a site in which hundreds and hundreds of men and women freely, by choice, gave up their lives, first, to protect the lives of other people and, second, to preserve the dignity and honor of the United States of America." The mayor couldn't have said it any better, and he showed once again why Time magazine couldn't have picked a better choice to be its Person of the Year.