Hi, Lindy--

Having some money left over for infrastructure, health care, education, Social Security and outdoor barbecues would be nice...

Infrastructure: like, maybe, buildings in Manhattan? Like a secure transportation system? Like a not-overwhelmed, overtaxed emergency-services organization? We need to protect our infrastructure from maniacs like these.

Health care: Well, there are a few thousand people who are not going to have to worry about that anymore. Ditto Social Security. But we need a lot of mental health people to counsel the stricken right now. Is this the health care wave of the future? Do we want it to be?

These terrorists are themselves threats to all the things you list, in a very immediate physical way, as well as taxing our financial resources to repair the damage they do. They must be stopped.

To say that America is responsible for this disaster is like saying Christianity is responsible for the Crusades. In a very shallow sense, you can make both cases, but that ignores the other actors and all the other historical circumstances, as well as the subgroups that constitute America and Christianity.

You might just as well blame a pedestrian for getting hit by a car. He tried to cross the road, didn't he?

And-- Why, when something bad happens, must it be that our actions "come back to haunt us"? If that were true, all our good deeds would come back to haunt us too. This is politics, not karma.

We were hit because we are leaders of a political, social and economic movement that others in their little cells oppose, and can only fight with single dramatic acts because they have no large group to further their ambitions. Pay a call on the 900s in the non-fiction section of your local library and research Europe just before the First World War. This pattern of terrorism has happened before. It was the target's "fault" then, too.

Regards--
Mary Anne