The world, but particularly the United States, has had a tough week. For the moment, the bad guys are winning; we don't really know who they are, and across North America, while the lights may be on, nobody's home, in terms of getting on with life.
Not only do we not know who they are, we don't know why they did it. Very few people seem to care about this, which seems odd to me; first of all, any reasonable person has to wonder why anyone would throw away their lives to accomplish this crazed evil thing. Without some insight here, the simple solution (just killing them all)
- won't work, and
- will likely help create more lethal crazed evil.
The world has changed. We should have known this already, but now we do: no amount of extra security nor billions on high-tech defense nor stirring displays of uplifting patriotism will save your ass if somone reasonably intelligent wants to kill you and is willing to die doing it. What are the implications if this for politics and business and life? Nobody knows yet.
Any good news? The death toll - single-digit-thousands in NYC, a couple of hundred at the Pentagon - is a lot better than it could have been. If there's any city in the world that can shake a thing like this off and get going again, it's New York. I hope they rebuild the WTC with four towers twice as tall. A lot of people I know took this opportunity to get in touch with people they should get in touch with more often and communicate from the heart. Here in Vancouver, I know from personal experience that the blood donor system and the billeting office for people stranded at the airport both basically had to shut down and turn people away because the desire to help was so strong. I gather that the same is true pretty well around the world.
I'm a Web guy; I recommend visiting Scripting.com and going back to that Tuesday and reading forward - he has every relevant news pointer and some coverage that's not just the same-old same-old.
And at noon today, let's shut up for a minute and join the rest of the world in a respect and sympathy. My prayer will be for wisdom in our leaders; they'll need it, because this problem just isn't easy.
