Back on the night of September 11th, 2001, I wrote an essay. I didn’t have a blog back then, but I still felt I had to express my thoughts. Now that I have a blog, I might as well put out the essay exactly as I wrote it back then:

September 11, 2001. It won’t sink in for days. When things change this quickly, it will take a good amount of time for the mind to catch up. But, when the dust settles, our world will be forever changed.
Our first priority is to recover. There are thousands injured, and it is up to everyone to do their part, to donate blood, money, or whatever is needed. We need to restore as much normalcy as we can as quickly as possible. Our enemies are gloating at the disarray they caused, so we to show strength by simply getting back to our business unhindered. But, make no mistake; it will not be business usual. Not now.
Once shock subsides, anger is sure to replace it. It’s not a emotion well suited for decision making, but it is unavoidable at this time. Efforts to subside it will be futile, but it can be directed.
I’ve already heard plenty of people decrying the abilities of our intelligence community, how they should have seen this coming. Intelligence probably does need improving, but this should in no way be the main focus. No matter how good we make our intelligence, we can’t always prevent something like this. The only way is to remove any desire to commit acts of terror.
It’s seems hard to rationalize with people who would do something like this. They poke a tiger with a sharp stick and somehow expect some good to come of it. But our actions can put this in simple unmistakable terms. Our response to this must convince all those who witness it that acts of terror will do nothing but herald the perpetrators destruction. To simply apprehend and arrest those involved is not enough at this point. Those who hijacked the planes were not the only terrorists who committed suicide with today’s actions.
It’s a terrible thing to call for vengeance, but if our response falls even slightly short, we will only encourage more acts like this. We must take the terror to the terrorists, hunting down all we can find and punishing anyone who would harbor them to the point that a country would fear even the possibility of terrorists resting in their borders.
It will be easy to overdo our response, to add to the evil, but it is war. We will have to make decisions of life and death that lie beyond the wisdom of man. We just have to pray to God to lead us in our action to as good a solution as exists. It was a dark day today, and it will be dark for some time to come.