Terror Comes Calling

I looked up at the sky Tuesday afternoon and again Wednesday afternoon.

Both days were beautiful. Bright, clear with a few wispy clouds here and there.

But looking up at the sky you couldn't help but notice something was wrong.

No aircraft. No white, billowing condensation trails. The sky was empty.

It was strange.

Of course the reason the sky was empty was because of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes nationwide after four airliners were hijacked Tuesday morning.

The empty skies help drive home for me the magnitude of what happened to our country this week.

It pointed up the sheer lunacy of the world in which we live.

A world where a small handful of merciless terror mongers can take thousands - and disrupt tens of millions - of innocent lives in a few short minutes.

A world where some elements of the international community are so filled with hatred for our country that they are capable of unimaginably cruel acts to exact their idea of retribution.

It was difficult to watch unravel.

Sometimes, in this business, it is easy to become anesthetized to human suffering.

You see so much of it. You see it all the time. You can't really ignore it. It's news.

Automobile accidents, fires, murders and the like seem to become commonplace after awhile.

It's a sad and unsettling yet all-too-common occupational hazard of journalism.

This week was different.

On Tuesday I watched the plane hit the World Trade Center. (I firmly believe the terrorists wanted me to watch. That's why there was an 18-minute lag between impacts. They knew the place would be full of cameras by the time the second plane arrived.)

I felt a wave of anxiety. I felt tears well up as I thought about all the grandmas, grandpas, moms, dads, sons and daughters on those airliners and in those offices.

I wondered what it must have been like to be on one of those planes, or to look up from your desk on the 80th floor and see a 757 bearing down on you.

Even the most seasoned, front-line journalist couldn't help but be moved by the magnitude of the tragedy.

It was worse than Pearl Harbor. Heinous as that attack was, at least the targets were military.

It was worse than the earthquakes and other natural disasters I've seen in my lifetime because it was calculated and perpetrated against innocent victims.

Then, as events unfolded, the emotion turned to anger. Anger as the buildings collapsed. Anger as it became apparent that the death toll would rise into the thousands.

On Wednesday, I watched the rescue efforts and film of the previous day's events.

The emotion changed to a kind of bizarre surrealism.

I remembered seeing this scene before.

The burned out, smoldering, twisted wreckage of collapsed buildings and gutted vehicles. The anguished, meandering swagger of disoriented, soot-covered survivors.

How many times have we viewed that scene worldwide?

It was in Lebanon or Angola or South Africa or Saudi Arabia or Libya or Turkey or India or Pakistan or Afghanistan.

This time, it was in New York.

After we determine who is responsible, who helped and anyone else even peripherally involved, we must take swift decisive action.

These terrorists are akin to Hitler. Nobody talked about bringing Hitler to justice.

I don't want the terrorists brought to justice. I want them brought to their knees.

After that we must take steps to ensure that something like this never happens again.

Airport security must be improved. This will necessarily inconvenience passengers and perhaps make them feel as if their civil liberties are being trampled. We may feel a little less free, but I really don't see a choice.

We have seen the alternative. We have seen the price we pay for complacency.

Perhaps we should consider air marshals again. Perhaps we should put terrorist-proof cockpits in commercial aircraft.

Whatever it takes, we must eliminate the future possibility of this type of terrorist act.

But what about other terrorist threats - biological, nuclear or other?

That's where our country's intelligence community comes in.

We must fortify it.

Over the past several years, the budget for that type of thing has been cut. The CIA and the FBI were downsized.

Our budget priorities changed. People who urged increased funding for the CIA and FBI were labeled as alarmist or isolationist.

"The Cold War is over." How many times did we hear that hue and cry?

We diverted those funds to warm, fuzzy, vote-getting social programs.

Now, the same politicians and pundits who deplored the use of tax dollars to fund covert operations by the CIA are demanding to know why our government didn't know about this threat in advance.

Why? I'll tell you why.

There are 20,000 CIA employees. Only 1,000 of them work in covert operations. That's simply not enough to keep track of all the terrorist entities that we face.

We need to change our budget priorities. We need more than technology. We need people. We need moles, undercover agents and seedy informants. We should even sign up a few former terrorists if we can. Let's face it, they are the only people capable of infiltrating terrorist organizations.

It will be expensive. It will be money well spent.

But that's in the future. It's too late for that this time.

It seems as if a certain innocence has been lost. Sept. 11, 2001, will leave an indelible blot on our consciousness.

America and Americans have changed. But not for the worse.

You see, the terrorists hoped to tear us apart. I believe they did quite the opposite.

I sense our nation is more unified now than ever before in my lifetime. Unified against the evil of terrorism.

Yes, terror has come calling in the U.S. But let the terrorists know this:

Someday soon the U.S. will come calling.

And hell will come with us.