Attack on America

This morning, a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/worldtrade.crash/index.html"
title="CNN Story on the terrorist attacks">
coordinated terrorist attack was launched
against the United States. Two U.S. airliners were hijacked
by as-yet unidentified terrorists, and crashed into the
World Trade Center’s twin towers and another hijacked
airliner crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth plane was
hijacked and crashed in a field in Western Pennsylvania,
just south east of Pittsburgh. The victims number in
the tens of thousands.

I almost can’t believe that this has
happened. It’s like something out of a movie.
I’ve seen the footage of the second plane crashing into the
trade center tower played over and over again and it still
doesn’t seem quite real. This attack seems designed
to create horror – more than a bombing, the thought of one
of our own airplanes crashing into the greatest symbols of
American commerce and military strength is so horrific… I
don’t even know what to say.

This is undoubtedly the worst attack on American
soil in my lifetime. All day I’ve been struggling
back and forth between feelings of sadness and anger.
My heart goes out to the victims’ families, and we can only
hope that this cowardly and vicious attack on America
doesn’t lead to full-scale war, although thoughts of
revenge do come to mind. President Bush has said that
the perpetrators of this atrocity will be hunted down and
punished, and I think he speaks for all of us, expressing
our national horror and anger at this attack.