America’s children need reassurance of normality
by Chris Taylor, editor-in-chief

    “Building gone.”

    Those words greeted me when I returned home Tuesday afternoon. My 3-year-old son couldn’t quite fathom what had happened, but he was smart enough to figure out that a building had been on television, and now it was gone.

    So, what did I tell him about the attack?

    How can I explain to him that there are some people in the world who hate us and our country because we are successful and rich? That because of religious differences, some people are fanatical enough to believe that by hijacking a plane and killing themselves and others that they will enter some wonderful afterlife.

    How do I explain to him that the children on the news celebrating in the streets are nothing more than monsters and terrorists in-training? That no one should ever take pleasure in another’s suffering and that the ones cheering don’t deserve to live in this world or any other.

    These things are impossible to explain. I am a grown man, and I am confused by this attack. I am angry that people (especially children) would be handing out candy and cheering. These people deserve a cruise missile right up their nostrils. The death toll for this attack will probably be somewhere in the 10 to 20 thousand range. And some people actually have the nerve to think this is a good thing?

    That doesn’t make any sense, and it just proves my theory that some people are completely worthless and don’t deserve to live at all.

    I may not like our president. I may not have even voted for our president, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this situation. Bush may not have been my first choice, or even my 23rd choice, but he’s the president, and we have been attacked.

    He has my support right now. Now, we need to even the score a little. We didn’t start this fight, but we will finish it. I have no doubts about this.

    It is important to strike back swiftly and fiercely because if we don’t, there really is nothing to dissuade other terrorists from trying such tactics again.

    These terrorists have disrupted our way of life. Flights have been cancelled, and you can’t even leave the country.

    It’s extremely important that this is just a temporary situation. We can’t live in fear. That’s what our enemies want. Besides, we are Americans. We are much tougher than that.

    But, 3-year-olds don’t understand these issues, and I don’t know how to tell him without scaring him to death.

    So what did I do?

    I chickened out. I turned off the television and threw in a movie.

    There had been enough death for one day.