Terrorist attack exposes nation?s vulnerability

Make no mistake, it is the end of the world as we know it.

The United States' world view was forever altered Sept. 11 by the terrorist hijacking of four planes and the kami-kaze attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Unable to leave work to watch the drama unfolding on television, I listened to the radio throughout the day. I told my staff, "Thousands of people are dead. There is no way, considering the circumstances, that it can be otherwise."

I know an act of war when I see (or hear about) one, and I silently and selfishly thanked God that my brothers are now too old to be called to military service, and my nephews too young.

The phrase, "50,000 people," the number who worked in the World Trade Center, played over and over in my head as I went about my editing and proofreading.

I was in a daze.

When a slick radio announcer promised more coverage of the "ATTACK ON AMERICA," and I could hear the capital letters, I realized the national media machine had already begun to "package" the tragedy. I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.

I did not get my first glimpse of the actual disaster footage until I got home from work around 5:30 p.m.

I watched the images of the plane crashing into the trade center, and I wept at the sight of the twin towers collapsing, over and over again.

All those people. In the planes, in the buildings, on the street. My people. Americans.

I got up early Sept. 12 and saw for the first time the footage of a man plummeting to earth from the Trade Center. My mouth fell open and this horrible noise came out. I was sobbing. And it shocked me.

After all, as a journalist, and therefore a cynic, I've expected something like this to happen for years. Would it be a suicide bomber? A vial of anthrax in the subway? A mystery package in the doorway of a federal building?

I knew that Oklahoma City was a small taste of things to come. But I did not could not understand what a concentrated terrorist attack would mean to me as an American citizen.

Until now.

We have been living in a fool's paradise, blissfully unaware of (or at least blissfully able to ignore) the rabid hatred that is directed toward our nation. And our vast, 24-hour, seven-day-a-week broadcast news media has failed to inform us properly in this regard.

Why? Because "newstainment," the bastard blend of news items and celebrity gossip, sells better than honest journalism.

Somewhere between slickly produced "news" items about starlets' boob jobs, boy-band contract negotiations and sports hero drug violations, we get five seconds of footage of angry foreign mobs and a sound bite about a "protest against U.S. policy."

We see thousands of foreigners waving unintelligible signs, screaming unintelligible epithets, burning American flags or effigies of the president, but the reality of our role in international affairs, who our enemies are and, especially, why they are our enemies, is never examined in detail.

And we, as a people, have not demanded that information. We have been contented. Ignorant. Vulnerable.

America has lost its innocence. We will never be so easy a target again. But now the question is, what can we do about what has happened? Calling for vengeance is a lot easier than taking vengeance.

The world is an ever smaller place. Our enemies live cheek and jowl by our allies, and a bomb's blast radius makes no allowances for political borders or allegiances.

This is a cause that cannot be won with military might alone.

The truth is that America is going to have to become a full participant in the global community; we are going to have to learn to communicate and work with the international community, not just play when we feel like it and threaten to take our ball and go home if game doesn't go our way.

It's a new world and a dangerous one.

Be careful out there.