Archive: Anonymous villains and civilian targets add to 9/11 evil

From our archives, read Tom Ferrick's instant reaction to the 9/11 attacks:

I am a man of words at a loss for words to describe how I feel about this new Day of Infamy.

Disbelief, horror, disgust, fear. All of them will do, but none of them will do. They are too pallid, too weak.

Like the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps after World War II, many of us are driven to silence. The enormity of the evil demands it. It suffocates the spirit; it stills the tongue.

Can these awful events be a product of the human mind? They seem more the province of the devil. The work of monsters.

How else to explain the elegant coldness of the plan: four airliners hijacked, two to ram the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan; a third to take dead aim at the Pentagon; a fourth to destroy the White House or the Capitol, but - mercifully - crashing before it reaches its target.

Waking up to a glorious September day, we watch the horror unfold, live on television. The crash of the airliners, the collapse of the two towers, the volcanic plumes of dust, the rising flames, the wail of a hundred sirens. Death everywhere.

Comparisons with Dec. 7, 1941, are inevitable but inexact.

Both involved carefully planned, meticulously executed surprise attacks by foreign forces. But the Japanese pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor had military targets and military goals. Their aim was to cripple the U.S. fleet until Japan could conquer what it wanted in the Far East. Of the nearly 2,500 Americans killed in Hawaii that day, all but a handful were sailors or soldiers.

The aim of yesterday's attacks was pure terror. The perpetrators wanted to bring this nation to its knees - not physically, but surely psychologically. They succeeded.

Unlike 60 years ago, most of the targets were civilians. It was a slaughter of innocents.

At this juncture, no one dares guess what the death count could be. You and I know, somewhere inside, that it will be in the thousands.

Will it exceed D-Day, with its 6,600 Americans killed?

The Korean War, with its 33,000 Americans dead in combat?

My heart is too sick to guess. But surely, Sept. 11 will go down as the day with the largest loss of life in U.S. history. By the time the last funeral is held, there will be few Americans untouched by the injuries or deaths. A parent, a spouse, a relative, a friend, a cousin, an old roommate, a business associate.

Everyone will know someone who knew someone who was hurt or died. We will have perverse proof of the six degrees of separation.

Like Pearl Harbor, people will remember for years where they were when they heard.

I was at the kitchen table, tapping at my computer. My wife yelled down from her upstairs office, urgency in her voice: You'd better turn on the TV now. I did, just in time to see the second plane hit the Trade Center. A fireball, followed by dense smoke.

Horror happens in real time these days. In 1941, it was hours before Americans heard of the attack, weeks before there were newsreel accounts.

My first reaction? Fear that this could be the first of many attacks, perhaps in a number of cities. Fear, not for myself, but for our children, recently departed for school.

Everyone felt that clutch of fear. That was the intent of the attacks.

They could have been staged at midnight and had great effect. Instead, the attackers waited until the buildings were at their most crowded. This enemy wanted an astonishing body count. Objective achieved.

Once the shock wears off, inevitably, the nation will rise up angry. After all, this is an act of war. But, by whom?

There was no doubt in 1941. Those planes were emblazoned with the Rising Sun. Whom do we declare war on today? A hundred terrorists, in a dozen different cities?

Our enemy fades in the shadows, out of reach of justice or revenge.

And that leaves us with our fears - that it could happen again, maybe closer to home.

This is the punishment that terrorism exacts upon civilization.

This is the lasting evil of the events of Sept. 11.