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GRIEVING MOTHER SEEKS UNDERSTANDING

By Bill Gallagher

"Josh died and I must accept that. But as an American citizen, I do feel that I should speak out about my concerns." -- Marilynn Rosenthal, whose son Josh died in the World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001.

DETROIT -- Her voice is firm and resolute. Her eyes are bright and her smile is warm. Marilynn Rosenthal exudes the confidence that flows from her sincerity and commitment. She is on a mission to help the world better understand what drove 19 young men to commit mass murder. She deplores President George Bush's war in Iraq and is "continually frustrated, upset and angry" over his response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It seems like yesterday, to tell the truth," she said as we talked at her home in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Five years have gone very fast." Marilynn has been busy over those years reading, studying, doing research, traveling to the Middle East and writing.

She has a doctorate in sociology and teaches at the University of Michigan. Marilynn used her academic discipline to address the fundamental question of what motivated people to kill her son and so many others.

Her quest for truth and understanding took her on an extraordinary trip to meet the family of the hijacker-pilot who crashed United Flight 175 into the south tower, killing himself and her son. She wants deeper public understanding of what inspired Marwan al-Shehhi and she strives to "find ways to make something good come out of evil."

Josh Rosenthal was one of the best and the brightest. I know his father, Avram "Skip" Rosenthal, who for years ran a used bookstore in Farmington, Mich. Skip is a retired librarian who enjoyed playing his banjo in front of the shop and had a warm word for everyone. His son's death and the anguish Skip felt put a personal face on the horrors of Sept. 11 for me.

Josh graduated from the University of Michigan and had a master's in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. He loved to sail, scuba dive, travel, read and enjoy a fine glass of wine. He adored his family and had scores of devoted friends. The world fascinated him, and his job as senior vice president of Fiduciary Trust International took him around the globe.

"He was an unusual man. He really was," his mother said. "He brought together a number of characteristics you don't often find in one person. He was a lovely, energetic, curious human being. He was smart and very well educated. He read a lot and cared about the world that he was in. He was analytical and he was also a very warm individual. And he was also a very good listener."

The horrendous images of Sept. 11 will always live with Marilynn. But she resists a post-Sept. 11 America and government policy that pivot on military action, vengeance and retribution.

"The thing that bothers me is that I don't think that anything we've done made the world better," she said.

She doesn't believe Bush's approach has done much to contain the fanatic fundamentalist Islamists who murdered her son.

"My own view is that it's because we put the emphasis on a military response without also, in addition, using a wide variety of diplomatic tools to understand what motivates these people, to understand what makes their message attractive to other young people in the Muslim world, Muslims anywhere, in our own country and in Britain," she argued.

She advocates a new course, to "see if we can't find some positive ways to mute the power of their message." Marilynn, at age 76, pursues her new academic quest with the enthusiasm and energy of a teen just handed the keys to the car.

She's tapped into the great resources at the University of Michigan, conducted scores of interviews and used her skills as a social scientist to delve into the subject. She has a new section in her bookcase for the nearly 100 books she's read on Islam and the Middle East. I'll bet "Bookworm" Bush hasn't read even one of them.

Marilynn scoffs at Bush's cheap sloganeering and labeling of terrorists as "fascists."

"This president doesn't care about language, meaning, and he apparently doesn't care about facts, but I do, very, very deeply," she said fervently.

Marilynn's passion for knowledge and understanding took her to the German government, where she learned much about the Sept. 11 terrorists, who spent considerable time in Hamburg plotting the attacks. Her work drew her to what drove Marwan al-Shehhi, one of the Sept. 11 death-plane pilots who came to Germany on a scholarship at a technical university.

"I was very much focused on the young man, the jihadist, the murderer, the martyr, depending on where you sit in the world. ... Yes, for me he is a murderer. He killed my son and 2,763 other innocent people who didn't even know we were at war," she said.

Her methodology was penetrating: "It seems to me that you had to approach him as another mother's son and find out who he was as a human being, why he made this choice, why he chose to join this movement."

Marilynn learned a great deal about the last years of Marwan's life preceding Sept. 11, but as a "reasonable scholar," she wanted to learn about his life as a boy and a teenager. She located his family in the United Arab Emirates and arranged to visit them.

"It was very touching," she said. Marilynn is describing the remarkable experience in the book she is writing.ĘShe gave me a taste of the unique encounter: "I went with a lot of apprehension. What would they be like? What would it be like to sit in the room with them? What would I say to them? But, frankly, they've lost a son. They've lost a family member and they're confused about it and they're ashamed."

It's hard to imagine the combination of courage and curiosity that Marilynn possesses. She wants her work to make the world better.

Bush's exploitation of Sept. 11 and his constant references to it to justify the war in Iraq anger Marilynn.

"I think America understands that they lied about the reasons for going in there," she said. "There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. They are natural enemies, as a matter of fact."

The Senate Intelligence Committee has, at long last, concluded that Saddam and al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were never in cahoots, as Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the others in the administration's cast of pathological liars continue to claim.

The Senate committee cited a 2005 CIA finding that Iraq's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."

Marilynn believes Bush planned to make war with Iraq long before Sept. 11.

"They simply used 9/11 opportunistically," she said. "And they did it in a way that insults the intelligence of the American people."

Now, each September, the Josh Rosenthal Lecture is held at the University of Michigan's Gerald Ford School of Public Policy. This year, Juan Cole, an expert on Islamic movements, will speak on the topic, "Are we winning the fight against al-Qaeda? Reflections five years later." Marilynn is happy Josh's name is "associated with the effort to build understanding."

Certainly, his mother is, too, with her remarkable work, perseverance and courage. I felt with Marilynn that I was in the presence of a prophetic soul.

Marilynn Rosenthal takes a path in pursuit of truth and understanding that is exemplary and a living tribute to her murdered son. She refuses to yield to fear.

"I want something different. I want something more positive," she said.

She gives us hope and a way to move beyond our present course: "It's very easy for you to hate and hate blindly. And I don't think that gets us anywhere. I'm not sure that hate and vengeance and retribution really are the ultimate answers."


Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com September 11 2006