[Vision2020] 9/11 - what should our reaction have been?

[Paul Rumelhart]

I've been wanting to ask this question for a while, now.  Maybe it's time.

Think back to your personal reaction to 9/11.  From how you felt when 
you heard about it on the news, to how you felt in the days and weeks 
afterwards.  Think about how our country as a whole handled it, 
including the different branches of government, the military, our large 
corporations, our entertainment industry, and the general population.

I did not lose anyone in 9/11, yet few national events have reached me 
so profoundly.  I remember going in to work that day, and feeling mostly 
dazed and shocked.  Maybe overwhelmed is a better description.

I will start off by saying that I rate almost all responses to this 
tragedy at about a D, at best.  Including my own response to it.  We, as 
a country and as a set of individuals, mostly handled this tragedy with 
fear-induced responses.  Why weren't we boldly telling the terrorists 
that they can kill us one-by-one or in groups, but they will never take 
our liberties from us?  That they will never force us to give up what we 
hold most dear simply because they can hurt us one time.  Why didn't we 
stand up as a country and give them the finger instead of cowering in 
fear and allowing our government to pummel anybody at all just to show 
we were taking action?  Why did we react in terror, falling into the 
reaction the terrorists wanted the most?

How should we prepare for the next one?  I don't just mean installing 
x-ray machines at sporting events or whatever, but how do we prepare our 
reactions to these events?  How do we learn as a country to come 
together as a bunch of defiant people rather than as a bunch of 
cowards?  I'd like to think I'm not a coward, but 9/11 has made me doubt 
myself.  I really was fearing what they would do next, instead of 
telling them loudly to go screw themselves.  How did we get this way 
(assuming I'm not the only one)?  How do we change it?

Paul