What should the world do? you ask.

Submitted by Lee D. Cary (United States), Mar 14, 2006 at 15:22

Mr. Gogol:
Provocative question you ask, sir. The "world" isn't likely to do anything. We, on the other hand, in the US, are as misunderstood in our temperament as we misunderstand those in the Middle East.

They aim to kill us with a thousand cuts, executing well over 20 years of terrorism with relative immunity. Yet ahead will come the day they exercise an act of terrorism that will constitute the tipping point that was not 9/11, where not enough of us died.

When that tipping point happens--and it may involve many fewer deaths than 9/11--the words of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, only quoted in part, after Pearl Harbor, will live again: "I fear that all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant. (The quote usually ends here, but he continued...) And filled him with a terrible resolve."

Our response on the day after the tipping point will be necessary, and it will be most certainly terrible, too.

Dr. Lee D. Cary, Little Elm, TX

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