Aliya Sternstein:A textbook for future generations

The year is 2020. Morgan Kay Beamer, newborn daughter of Sept. 11 victim and hero Todd Beamer, rolls into, let's say, Penn. She joins the class of 2024, along with the Daniel Pearl's as-yet unborn baby. The two Quakers enroll in History 432: The World in Wars -- taught by Stephen Ambrose Jr.

The class exposes Beamer and Pearl to every conflict from World War I to the war on terror. They read about Germans that died at the hands of Nazis in their own country. They hear lectures on the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. They see video footage of a former American senator confessing to having accidentally killed innocent Vietnamese women and children in Vietnam. They learn about civilian casualties of war.

Then, they get to 2001, and they read in their Houghton Mifflin books:

"In January of 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was senselessly killed in Pakistan, while doing his job. He left behind a wife who was seven months pregnant. Pearl represents the American work ethic. He sacrificed his life for the job. Daniel Pearl was a martyr."

Little Pearl is proud, as he should be. But something is missing from the above hypothetical hype. What about the dads murdered in Afghanistan and the widows left behind, victims of the other side of this war? What about the Afghan families destroyed? All those reported casualties from U.S. airstrikes are martyrs, too.

War unavoidably involves killing women and children. But those victims may not get credit from Houghton Mifflin. Professor Ambrose may not make baby Beamer and tiny Pearl memorize those names.

We cannot let that happen.

We must remember to keep a global perspective in interpreting the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. And we must look beyond Pearl and Beamer in recording those interpretations for posterity. Surely, the two men deserve mention and explanation. However, innocent people are dying on both sides of this war -- just as they did in World War II and in Vietnam. We have to capture the full image.

Works of history are rife with fallacies and omissions. Some historians tune in to only one or two perspectives -- leaving behind biased accounts. Several scholars usually preside over any compilation but that does not always guarantee a complete spectrum. Thorough historical analyses take a whole lot of time, research and energy. Cutting corners can cut out what really happened, as was the case when historians used to portray slaves as lazy Sambos rather than brave patriots -- like Pearl and Beamer -- who fought and died during the Civil War. We can not afford to make the same mistake when talking about the Afghans in 20 years. The global understanding that we preach will buckle if we offend or misrepresent.

The text should read:

"In January of 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was senselessly killed in Pakistan, while more than 100 civilian Afghans were mistakenly killed in their own country a few months earlier. Thousands of innocent victims lost their lives on Sept. 11, and central Asia lost many of its own during the ensuing battle. Men and women on both sides, who were going about their daily routines -- typing memos, shopping and talking to loved ones -- died. American and Afghan lives were lost in the name of freedom."

There are more characters in this plot than Pearl and Beamer. Hopefully, Pearl's colleagues -- in continuing his work -- will retrieve the names of foreign locals who perished. They should be recognized in the textbooks, next to Pearl. Those lost in the towers, the Pentagon and abroad deserve paragraphs, too.

As undergraduate and graduate students at one of the nation's best universities, we're the ones who will decide what goes down in the books. We'll be the professors and publishers in 2020 when the children of Sept. 11 take on the world for themselves. It's up to us to remember all sides of this story. As a scrupulous, fair journalist, that is what Danny Pearl would have wanted. Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.

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