I have never seen anything to equal the visceral impact of the towers' destruction. It was so staggering as to seem unreal. We wanted it to be unreal. I thought fleetingly of special effects, the movies, but the familiar reality of these iconic buildings, of Manhattan, could not be suppressed. Everyone in the room gasped and cried when the South Tower slid down upon itself, raising a dense column of smoke and ash where it had stood a moment before. TV commentators mentioned the similarity to staged implosions, to scheduled demolitions of condemned structures; they strained for real-world analogies, for the comfort of the known (the movies again). No one could believe this had really happened. Nor could we fully absorb it when we watched the North Tower fall, a scant half hour later. It did not seem real.

The Sunday after the attacks, I took my visiting father 100 miles south to Penn Station (the airports had barely started to function again). We went up to the street and looked down Eighth Avenue: the cloud was enormous, completely obliterating lower Manhattan. Normally, you could see the twin towers in sharp relief from here. But there was nothing. We walked around the corner to 33rd Street, and the Empire State Building was still standing, shining in the sun. I think that's when I fully realized the World Trade Center was gone, and how many people had died.

If the attack on the Pentagon had been the terrorists' sole focus, we would of course be appalled. The simultaneous highjacking of four jetliners, and the death of everyone on board each of them, would also be a tremendous blow. But the spectacular assault on the World Trade Center overshadowed the other events; it was easily the most devastating attack on America ever, more than doubling the death toll at Pearl Harbor.

Where is our response?

I write this on the evening of September 28. I hope by the time this column reaches our subscribers, it will be out of date—that America will have mustered the political will and moral courage to strike back.

I've read that reporters on small-town newspapers have been fired for suggesting that President Bush displayed panic by flying west on the day of the attacks; that his three-day delay in visiting New York evinced cowardice. We want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I personally found the President's address to Congress on September 20 stirring. But, more than a week later, his assertion that "from this day forward" we would hold nations harboring or sponsoring terrorists responsible for terrorists' actions seems hollow indeed, mere rhetoric.

We needed to act quickly and decisively. We needed to act symbolically—to demonstrate that countries incubating and underwriting terrorist actions will themselves pay a heavy price. No one wants to exacerbate the suffering of the Afghan people, but that is really a separate consideration. If states are to be held accountable, then let's hold them accountable. We should have leveled every governmental and military structure in Afghanistan and Iraq within days of the attack, and any resistance arising from those actions should have been dealt with proportionately.

It's true that military action alone will not eliminate terrorism, and it's also true that terrorists should be tried as criminals where possible—i.e., where they can be apprehended and brought to trial. It's true that diplomatic and economic action can help, that building an international coalition is important. It's certainly true that Arabic and Islamic people should not be indiscriminately targeted, in this country or abroad.

But these truths do not preclude our responsibility to act. Our failure to do so thus far is shameful.

—Tom Pletcher

(September 28, 2001)

Postscript, October 2, 2001:It now appears military action is imminent, according to remarks made this morning by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair said that if the Taliban does not surrender Osama bin Laden, then the U.S. and Britain (and possibly other Western allies) would seek to "eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians."

Blair's remarks came after U.S. Ambassador at Large Francis X. Taylor presented evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks which NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said was "clear and compelling."

The only possible justification for our protracted military inaction these past three weeks has been to marshall concrete facts, and to position our forces for maximum effectiveness. We fervently hope both conditions have now been met.

Postscript, October 12, 2001:The response—high-altitude bombing and cruise missiles directed at selected Afghan targets—came on Sunday, October 7. It persists today; indeed, we're told the effort to root out and destroy terrorist networks may last for years. The U.S. and Britain are involved in this phase of the military response; other allied countries may participate in later phases.

The battle needed to be joined. In hindsight, though, our remark about the "shamefulness" of the nearly one-month delay seems precipitous—deliberation and careful preparation were certainly called for, and will continue to be important in the ongoing campaign. We hope the selective targeting seen so far minimizes civilian casualties, and helps to keep the anti-terrorism coalition intact. And we hope this initial response proves effective, and can be seen to have at least an initial impact on the problem.

What happens next is anyone's guess. The FBI has issued a warning about renewed terrorist attacks over the next several days; anthrax-infected letters are apparently arriving in the mail. The only certainty is that the nation and its leaders, and all of us in our individual ways, must remain focused on fighting and eventually defeating terrorism. One way or another, we are heading for a new world order. This dangerous time can be viewed as an opportunity to help shape a better, safer and ultimately more just and humane new world.