Today the sun rose over a New York City without the twin towers of the World Trade Center for the first time in almost three decades. New York has long been a magnanimous lady, smiling broadly with arms open to welcome the world's poor and oppressed. Yesterday the oppressors bashed out her two front teeth.

The scope of the atrocities committed yesterday was far beyond a crime. Never before have so many American civilians lost their lives at one time, but this should not be thought of as mass murder, but rather as the opening sneak attack in a war. It really was a second Pearl Harbor.

It bothered me to listen to Senator Joe Biden, speaking from the Senate floor, saying things like "find out who is responsible" and "bring them to justice". That is the kind of language used when investigating a crime. It is the wrong response to the destruction of Fortress America. The time for investigations and justice is over. As Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania indicated during his time on the floor today, "bringing them to justice" is last week's response to terrorism and completely inappropriate now. This is no longer crime, this is war. The Department of Justice need not concern itself with the problem; it now falls clearly into the Department of Defenses' court.

The rules of enragement change when you are waging a war as opposed to investigating a crime. A policeman must wait until the bad guys commit a crime before they can intervene. A platoon in the bush doesn't wait until the enemy starts shooting before defending themselves. Instead, they endeavor to kill the enemy in their sleep before they have any ability to fight back. A policeman can only arrest those directly involved with an offense. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we did not try to find the carrier that launched the attack and arrest the crew. Instead, we worked hard to sink all of Japan's carriers and shoot down all their aircraft so that they were completely defeated and had no ability to attack again. Eventually, it took two nuclear bombs to gain that assurance.

Another important difference between a police action and a war is due process. I'm not really interested in due process and justice right now. What happened in New York and Washington was too big to adequately punish anyone for. Revenge is an empty goal.

I simply want national security. A free and open nation can't safely exist in a world where suicidal megalomaniacs have the ability and resources to commit attacks on this scale. For instance, we can never keep our airliners safe from hijackers of this kind, no matter how draconian airport security becomes. The only answer is to eliminate the source of the threat. We must eliminate any organization with the ability and the will to organize a terrorist attack on the United States, whether or not they have yet carried out such an attack. It would be a great mistake just to try to keep Terrorism at bay, with security and deterrents. Security can never be very good in a free society, and we don't want to live in a police state. Deterrents, such as threat of punishment or retaliation, are useless against suicidal religious maniacs. The only solution is to render our enemies harmless before they can do harm.

To me, this is war. Every American citizen must do whatever he or she can to contribute to the war effort. No American should even think about "getting things back to normal" until every known terrorist threat to the U.S. on Earth has been neutralized. Just like in World War II, normality is neither the priority, nor even a concern until the war is over and America is victorious.

I hope that Congress, within the next day or two, openly declares a state of war against Terrorism. All the money from the political 'war on drugs' should be immediately diverted to an actual war on Terrorism. I'd be willing to wager far more Americans died in the attack on our country yesterday than have ever died of illicit drug-related problems. How can we justify another dollar spent against drugs until the threat of international terrorism has been minimized?

I wonder if George Bush has anything up his sleeve? As of this afternoon, I'm still hearing way too many government officials talking about investigations and punishing those that committed the attack. That's old school and depressing to me. That kind of thinking is like the thinking of British officers in the French and Indian War, lining their troops up in rows as had been done in the previous few centuries of warfare. The redcoats were slaughtered by continental forces hiding behind trees, because they failed to adapt to the new paradigm for war.

The world changed drastically yesterday, business as usual is not the correct response. New York, as strong a lady as she is, was viciously raped yesterday. If American leadership doesn't quickly change the way it thinks about terrorism, she could easily be killed with a terrorist nuclear bomb next week. What? You think I should stop sounding like a summer blockbuster or a Tom Clancy novel? Go back and look at the video from yesterday and then tell me I'm being unrealistic.

Thursday, September 13 2001 Part II