Is This The Way to Respond?

It is the day before 9/11/07. Six years into this "new world" of terrorism-based thinking. Yet we still don't seem to get it. Here from yesterday's news:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend made a clear attempt to diminish the influence - or the perception - of the man who masterminded those attacks.

"This is about the best he can do," Townsend said of bin Laden. "This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."
--Associated Press

This kind of thinking scares me. It is like the "Bring it on" challenge early in the Iraq War (which they have done, by the way, leading to a lot more loss of life that we thought.) They have just insulted bin Laden and challenged him to show how powerful he really thinks he is. They have just thrown down the gauntlet and said, "Bring it on you wuss." I bet he doesn't like that one little bit.

It sounds like 9/10/01 instead of 9/10/07. On that Monday no one, no one, expected anything from him. He was not a real threat. Iraq was the threat. No one was thinking about airplanes filled with civilians as weapons. No one thought the Twin Towers would ever fall. Life was good and quiet.

9/10/07 is not good and quiet. Bin Laden is still at large, Saddam Hussein is dead, Afghanistan's Taliban are still around with reduced power but not gone, Iraq is becoming a quagmire and perhaps even more divisive than Vietnam. And we are as cocky as ever.

It makes me want to sing the chorus of the great anti-war song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone:

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

I pray that another 9/11 won't happen somewhere else anytime, let alone soon. But I fear that when we tease the rattlesnake he will want to strike.