The Rage and The Pride (La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio) by Oriana Fallaci
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Those impressive skyscrapers, so tall, so beautiful that while you raise your eyes to gaze at them you almost forget the pyramids and the divine buildings of our past. Those gigantic airplanes, oversized, which they now use as they once used sailing ships or trucks because everything here is moved by airplane. Everything. The mail, fresh fish, ourselves. (And don't forget that they invented the air war. Or at least they're the ones who developed it to the point of absurdity.) That terrifying Pentagon, that fortress which scares you just looking at it. That all–present, all–powerful science. That chilling technology that in a few short years has completely changed our daily lives, our millennial ways of communicating, eating, living. And where did he strike them, the reverend Osama Bin Laden? In the skyscrapers and in the Pentagon. How? With airplanes, with science and technology. By the way: do you know what gets me the most about this wretched multi–millionaire, this AWOL playboy who instead of courting blonde princesses and running wild in the night clubs (as he used to do in Beirut when he was 20 years old) enjoys himself by killing people in the name of Mohammed and Allah? The fact that his endless wealth comes from the earnings of a corporation specializing in demolition, and that he himself is a demolitions expert. Demolition is an American specialty.

When we met I found you almost stupefied by the heroic efficiency and admirable unity with which the Americans have faced this Apocalypse. That's right. Despite all the shortcomings that always get rubbed in their face—that I myself always rub in their face (though those of Europe, and of Italy in particular, are even more serious)—America is a country with important things to teach us. And speaking of heroic efficiency, let me sing a paean to the Mayor of New York. That Rudolph Giuliani to whom we Italians should kneel in gratitude. Because he has an Italian last name and an Italian origin and he makes us look good before the whole world. Rudolph Giuliani is a great mayor, one of the greatest. And that's coming from someone who is never happy with anything or anyone, starting with myself. He's a mayor worthy of another great mayor with an Italian last name, Fiorello la Guardia, and many of our mayors ought to go and study under him. They ought to come to him with bowed heads, or better with ash on their heads, and ask him: "Signor Giuliani, sir, please tell us how it's done."

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