I have been absorbed with the events in New York and Washington for the past few days.  So have most of you.

Often I watch the news as I have lunch, and on Tuesday the unreality of the TV pictures took a moment to soak in.  I wasn't watching a movie or old clips of the previous World Trade Center bombing.  I had been isolated, working without interruption all morning and thus had no clue until I turned on the TV at noon.

My first thought was of the militant Islamic Fundamentalist and bin Laden.  My second thought was, "Oh, you don't know what you have done."  I immediately thought of the attack on Pearl Harbor and of the misunderstanding many in the Japanese leadership had of America.

We confuse people because we are an open society.  We debate openly, and we disagree openly (even viciously) at times.  Our politics can be ruthless.  Then we vote, elect our new officials, and repeat the process.

When our troops are attacked overseas, many Americans are not sure they should be there in the first place.  Even when a ship is bombed in a foreign port, we tend to understand that people in the area have been fighting for centuries.  When our embassies are bombed, that is more difficult to understand.  Civilized people respect embassies.

The world thinks us weak and without the will to fight when often our sense of justice interferes with our resolve.  The problem in Vietnam was that too many Americans never understood the war. We understand this one.

We are at war with a movement that dreams of imposing their radical brand of Islam not only on the Middle East but on the world.  They want to force the United States out of the Middle East, and they want to eradicate all moderate Arab governments as well as Israel.  In Iran and Afghanistan they were successful in overthrowing governments.

Many Americans doubted the wisdom of Israeli policy.  Many Americans felt sympathy for the Arabs.  All that crumbled with the Twin Towers and burned in the fires at the Pentagon.

They don't know what they have done