Doris "Granny D" Haddock is famous for her peace walks around and across America on behalf of a more enlightened and progressive society. Below is an excerpt from an e-mail she set out after the terror attacks.

... AS WE EMERGE FROM OUR PAIN, as we begin to accept the dimensions of this loss, we will of course resolve as a nation to make our world safer. Whenever we suffer a tragedy, we ask ourselves, "how can we prevent this in the future?" In answering this question, all Americans must participate and add what they can to the discussion and the plan. It is an opportunity for the political left and the political right to respect each other's point of view and their differing interpretations of history.

Those who see the attack as a military act of war are like the cancer surgeon who must find the tumor and kill it. Some minds indeed have become cancerous in this world and they threaten our survival ... What we saw Tuesday morning, horrific as it was, was essentially the loss of several large buildings and thousands of their inhabitants. We risk the loss of whole cities --millions of people-- in today's charged international environment.

While the surgeons will cut, others will look to a deeper question: how can such cold-bloodedness arise in the hearts of our fellow men? As the nutritionist examines the lifestyle that may lead to disease, we begin to ask: What can we do in the future so that love and respect are nurtured in the place of hatred? Surely we cannot kill our way to love and respect, where our only true security resides.

The surgeon's will undoubtedly have their way for a time. The news shows --that incidentally are never interested in covering the reasons why so many people are angry at American policies-- are now full of swaggering militarists who are looking, please, for someone to kill for peace. They will have their way, for the emotions of our nation are running to red.

But those who seek true security must not stand aside in silence. Those who know that international justice is the only road to international peace must continue to speak their minds. It is not un-American to do so. It is, on the contrary, un-American to fall into a state of fascism, where our civil liberties are forsaken and the human needs of Americans and of people around the globe are forgotten.

The secretaries and file clerks and young executives in the stricken office buildings, and the children and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers aboard those four airplanes would not have been the targets of hatred, had we Americans better expressed our highest values throughout the world --had our government expressed in all its actions the fairness and generosity that characterize our people.

That disconnection between our people and our government does not excuse the cold mass-murders committed by terrorists, but it helps explain it, and we cannot stop it if we do not understand it...

Doris "Granny D" Haddock