Some on this List have called for cooler heads to prevail. I sympathize,
but I sincerely doubt this will happen. Let's look at the numbers:
Property damage is already in the billions of dollars.
Early estimates are that as many as 35,000 lives have been lost. No
estimate I've heard believes the number to be credibly less than 10,000.
American Airlines alone has apparently lost three aircraft, each containing
several hundred passengers. So far, five or six large aircraft and one
smaller one appear to have been hijacked and used, successfully or
unsuccessfully. That's over 1,000 innocent people just on the aircraft.
Attacks took place against the U.S.'s chief symbol of capitalist
infrastructure and military infrastructure as well as important symbols of
the governmental infrastructure.
This makes Pearl Harbor look puny in comparison. Unlike Pearl Harbor, most
of the targets were innocent civilians going about their business. The
loss of life and property dwarfs Pearl.
There will be no appeasement, and the world has become a very different and
much scarier place as of this day. Like sixty years ago, The Slumbering
Giant has awakened. Even the perpetrators will come to regret this day and
wish they could turn back the clock, as I suspect that they were more
"successful" than they dreamed they would be. This will become their
nightmare. Most of the terrorists in the world who are known to U.S.
intelligence agencies can now probably measure their remaining lifespan in
weeks, if not days, and few will shed tears for their "passing". Even the
Afghanistanian Taleban and the P.L.O.'s Yasser Arafat have rushed to
disavow these attacks, as have numerous known terrorist factions. Let's
hope there will be no safe harbor again for terrorists.
God help us all.
Garth
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