GENIUS

Just as Grant and his generals woke up from Shiloh on April 8 to a new world, so did Americans on September 12.

In a blink the old idea of easy retaliation by using cruise missiles or saber-rattling press conferences seems to have vanished. With the end of that mirage, the two-decade fear of losing a single life to protect freedom and innocent civilians also disappeared.

Past ideas of restraint, once thought to be mature and sober, were now in an instant revealed more to be reckless in their naïveté and derelict by their disastrous consequences.

In the years to come we may well see far more nightmarish things in our military arsenal than bunker-busters and daisy-cutters.

Americans once feared to retaliate against random bombings; terrorists now wonder when we will stop — as the logic of September 11 methodically advances to its ultimate conclusion. Aroused democracies reply murderously to enemy assaults in a manner absolutely inconceivable to their naïve attackers.