In time, the September 11th attacks will be remembered for what they actually were: the equivalent of a single hornet’s sting. Out of 300 million citizens, only 3000 were slain, and out of tens of thousands of high rises in hundreds of metropolitan areas, only two were brought down.
So in reality, it was far from a death blow to our nation. However, it did provoke us into confronting the hornets’ nest: The Middle East. And just as a single insect sting is an annoyance, while an attack by a hive is deadly, so too did our country embark down a very dangerous road, with risks far in excess of what we had already endured.
That is not to say that we should have ignored what was done to us. Only that we should have taken into consideration the magnitude of the crusade we were undertaking, and what was truly required of us to completely and permanently abolish extremism. For if you cannot safely eradicate their nest, then you are better off learning to live with the occasional pests it produces.
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