We. Win.

Fifty years ago today, half a century, and beyond the lifetime of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people, the "Anti Imperialist Wall" began to take shape in Berlin, Germany. Hagen Koch mapped out some fifty kilometers of twists and turns meticulously with chalk so that the East German state could, with Prussian precision, cut the former, and ultimately future, capital of Germany in half and tear the heart out of their own nation for nearly thirty years.

George Santayana admonishes that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. There's merit to that warning especially when contemplating in less than a month we, in this country and many others around the world, will mark the sad tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

I remember when I visited Rik in West Berlin, before Patrick was born, I felt The Wall's presence much more (and much more often) than I saw it during my Berliner wochende-very much like a malevolent mist that touched everything and for those sentenced to live behind it, shaping and twisting their lives.

A month from now we'll be having the same thoughts and emotions about the concrete, steel and glass that Ursula Bach and Jan-Art de Rooij shared about the bricks and mortar which changed their lives. We'll pause to remember those who became accidental martyrs by simply going to work and never coming home, booking a seat on an aircraft that never arrived, answering a fire alarm that summoned trained lifesavers to their deaths. And we'll tear up, and perhaps become angry-so angry we'll nearly forget what those half a world away are fighting to protect or why they do it.

Along the way we've gotten distracted by the barking of the dogs of war--we count the cost of what we've lost rather than the value of what we've saved. At times, we've allowed ourselves to nearly be consumed by a fear that becomes a hatred of the other instead of recognizing that we are still here. That those who had nothing to live for and chose, instead to die, and to take as many as they could with them, did not win then and can not win ever.

As Berliners learned two decades ago when their Wall came down, "beyond borders, beyond religion and politics, beyond hatred and ignorance--lies hope, and a common bond." Today, not just in Germany or in Europe but everywhere is a reminder for those who still grieve and even for those who still hate that no matter the odds or the weight or the number against us, we will always win, because we must.

-bill kenny