If people are afraid of what America is going to do... too bad. I know that I and nearly everyone I have spoken to are of one single mind. The United States of America is at War. This is not a police action; this is not going to be a few missiles tossed in warning; this is going to be a drawn out war waged to completion over a matter of years. When it is done, there will not be a terrorist left alive in the Middle East. If that leaves the Middle East a barren plain, so be it.
I have heard many comments about American policies of the past. I do not necessarily agree with what went in the past, but as of the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I...simply....do....not....care. If the Palestinians keep their heads down, they may still be around in a couple years and at that time we should try to do something for them. But if they get in the way, they will be removed from the way.
Bellicose? Yes. I have been listening to the BBC and their various panels discussing America and shaking my head in disbelief at times at how they simply do not get it. The United States is not "waking up to it's vulnerability". Down in our hearts we all knew that was the case. 20 years ago I thought that sometime in the first decades of this century some city would be nuked. Those airplanes weren't nukes, but they were as potent as a terrorist nuke would have been. It would take multiple kilotons at ground level to accompish what they did. I think there is shock that it did finally happen; but that is not what has changed.
The real change is what happened on United Flight 93. [Besides the item on Dr. Pournelle's list, there was a good article on it at the CNN site.] This incident tells us more about the future than most of the other stories we have read and seen. It was the first "post WTC" hijacking in a sense. People on board found out about the WTC via mobile phones. Once they knew, they acted. The White House may still be standing today because of those very brave people. They gave their lives rather than be used as a tool in the death of countless others.
That is what has changed. There will never be another successful hijacking in America. There may never be another hijacker to ever see the ground alive again. The game has changed. Individuals will know that they must fight as individuals. They cannot delegate that battle, it is their immediate and personal responsibility to fight and if necessary die in the air to save thousands of their fellow citizens from an unspeakably horrible death.
Our government now has the most total, ongoing support for all out War that it has had since Pearl Harbor.
None, not one, no one involved with this terrible deed will be alive in a couple years. Every one of them will be tracked down and killed, and anyone who gets in the way will be killed. Oh, I know there will be cries of anguish about me saying this... but after WATCHING the death of perhaps 20,000 of my fellow citizens in a city where I did consultancy work and spent probably half of a three year period, watching them die in the near nuclear bombing of a building complex in which I have worked, have done cybercasts.... I have no mercy in my soul. I am deaf to the complaints of those who wish for moderation.
Terrorists should be very afraid tonight. There are at least 250,000,000 other people who are just as angry and just as implacably out to kill them as I am. Whatever it takes, however long it takes... they are dead.