Y'know, I've been feeling for the last few days that we need to respond, in a violent but targetted way, once we actually have a target. (We also need to make some long-overdue changes in our foreign policy, in my opinion.) But I'm frightened by the progression in Bush et al's talk from appropriate response to an "all-out war on evil" or whatever he's calling it. We're going to try to root out every terrorist in the world and nuke every country that supports them? This is crazy talk. We are incapable of this, and it's not our decision to make. If world governments united in this larger goal that might be different, but I worry that we are about to make an even bigger foreign-policy mistake than we've made in the past.

We can't return to the pre-WWI days when our goal (as Washington put it) was to be friendly with everyone and allied with no one. But we also shouldn't strive to be the big bully in the public school yard, either.

I truly hope that a middle ground is possible, where we do not roll over and let the terrorists get away with murder, but we also don't launch WW III.

Baruch dayan emet. Damn.

Well, it's not like there's anything most of us can actually do about today's attacks, but I feel like I should write something. So, so disjointed thoughts.

Wow. This really, really sucks. My heart goes out to the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been destroyed by this.

I want vengeance. Vengeance won't bring the dead back to life, but I want it anyway. Not on innocent bystanders, of course; terrorists play that game but we civilized people don't. But once someone unambiguously claims responsibility, or the feds figure it out on their own, I hope they will spare no fury in their retaliation.

Targetting innocent bystanders in attacks is the most despicable thing one can do. If you have a beef with some other country, then by all means go after the military targets if you must -- have a war or whatever. But what possible benefit can come from targetting just plain folks? It's not like "just plain folks" can actually do anything, after all. Ordinary people don't control national policy. (Yeah, in theory elections do that in the long term, but most people don't really pay attention to the platforms they're voting for, if they vote at all, so even that is dubious.)

I really, really do not understand what goes on inside the head of a terrorist. I don't mean the brainwashed ones (like the kids being raised in the PLO today); I mean what goes on in the heads of the guys thinking all this stuff up. Well, I guess part of it is that the guys driving the process aren't the ones who are getting killed, so to the extent that they can send sheep out to be martyrs, they win. But aren't they afraid of creating martyrs with their attacks?

Pity I never took any courses in behavioral psych.

If it is Arafat's thugs, as early reports indicated, I wonder if even this will be enough to cause the rest of the world to stop doing the PLO's will and open their eyes to what's going on over there. Or will Europe and the media keep acting as if everything is the fault of Israel and anyone who collaborates with her? There's plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the distribution is far from even.

I can see from the windows here at work that outbound traffic in Pittsburgh is hopelessly snarled. I think if a strike is coming I'd rather be in a building than in a gridlocked car -- more options.

The consequences go far beyond the lives lost and property destroyed today. The collateral damage, both economic and morale, will be enormous. (For a very small example, who do you know who's actually getting much work done today?)

We have a TV going out in the main hallway here at work. I would never want the live-reporter job, but my mind boggles at some of the trite things that the commentators say to fill air time. Oh well.

The six planes that are still unaccounted for (last I heard) should be close to out of fuel by now. How about some news of them? Where did they leave from, and where were they last spotted? Maybe the guy at NBC who apparently spent the morning designing their "attack on America" logo could go investigate this instead.