In the Aftermath

Since September 11, 2001, it's a whole new world. Or, maybe it's just that the United States has joined the rest of the world with the realization that yes, terrorist acts can happen here. We must be a little slow, since apparently we hadn't learned that from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1996 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (Yes, I happen to consider Timothy McVeigh's attack terrorism. Terror is terror.) We happened to squelch the fear after those two events. But that hole in the ground in New York City isn't going to let us forget for a long time.

I suppose that if any event justified a full military response from the United States, this one would qualify. And yet, I have a picture in my head of some cartoon cat character with a big mallet trying to chase a mouse, slamming down the hammer on the floor and knocking stuff over but not smashing the mouse.

Harboring terrorists is almost as bad as perpetrating the terrorist act, but only almost, and it doesn't guarantee an end to terrorism. Whether Osama Bin Laden is the culprit or it's someone else (and who else could it be, but who knows?), bringing the terrorists to some sort of justice is going to be as difficult as roping smoke. Especially if we have to go chasing around the forbidding landscape of Afghanistan, where superpowers have been stymied plenty of times before.

If we go after Osama, if we bomb the hell out of Afghanistan, we will worsen the hatred of fundamentalist Muslims against us. I thought we had too many angry fundamentalist Muslims in the world as it was. Of course, I thought we had too many angry fundamentalists, period. Mr. Falwell, take note, you pathetic slime.

But say we manage to rid the world of the source of this most recent terror, then what? How do we stop the next Osama wanna-be from smashing a plane into a building, or coming up with an even more audacious attack? Gods know we don't seem to need nuclear bombs anymore to create a mass-death-inducing spectacle. All someone seems to need is an idea and money, guts, and friends to pull it off.

That's what I'm worried about: things getting worse, not better. I don't want to say we should just go on with daily life as if nothing happened. But I sure hope someone's thinking twice before advocating sending troops and bombs to southwestern Asia. Because I don't think that's the real solution to the problem. I don't claim to know what the real solution is, but I'm sure it's more difficult than we're willing to consider.

--Charlie Songdog
September 19, 2001