What a couple of days this has been. Yesterday I was following my usual routine in the morning; crawling out of bed and checking the news online. The first thing I saw was the slashdot article saying two planes had hit the World Trade Center. Two planes – it must have been intentional, I thought. I assumed they probably meant small, personal planes and at first thought it might be some nutcases like Timothy McVeigh. But when I flipped on CNN and saw that they were commercial airlines, I knew immediately it was something bigger. Suicidal terrorists trying to commit mass-murder on as huge a scale as possible – only one thing in the world today immediately comes to mind to fit that description: Middle East Islamics. (I suppose I should qualify that by saying “militant” Islamics or something just in case there are some Islamics around that are not psycho mass-murders – and if there are, I hope they’re re-examining their choice of religions today)

Susan and I watched as both towers collapsed live on CNN and CNBC. And we continued to watch for most of the day as we tried to communicate with friends and relatives that were in the area. We determined that my Uncle was not in the Pentagon when the plane hit. My sister and brother-in-law turned out to be safe in Chicago. A friend who had been in New York over the weekend had left the day before. So far, my friends and family were out of harm’s way. We know from what we saw on TV that many others were not so lucky. I checked in with some Saudi-American friends to make sure they were safe (there are racist whackos in the US who, while mere amateurs compared to Islamic nutcases, will probably be using this opportunity to express some hate of their own).

We eventually went into to the office for about an hour to take care of a few things that couldn’t be put off. We tried to donate some blood but were turned away because of five hour lines (we’ll try again when the lines diminish). We did manage to at least make a donation to the Red Cross through Amazon. After returning home we watched more hours of coverage, including coverage of Palestinians and Egyptians apparently happy and rejoicing that their friends has set some new record for mass-murder. Finally, we tried to get some sleep.

I was up early this morning and was suprised by how many of those commenting on Slashdot and Advogato about the attack were defending the actions of the terrorists, calling for the US to do nothing in response, or, the most bizarre one I saw; a person who praised the bravery of terrorists, saying “Is there anything more brave than dying to save your country / people / faith?”. (sorry, these men were murders, evil, scum, cowards, religious nuts or even insane, but I certainly wouldn’t say they were brave). I think a lot of the posters were not from the US and probably were in fear of either the terrorist attacks or the US.

My own view is that what Bush is doing so far is dead-on. And, anyone who reads my news posts regularly is probably aware that I’m no fan of Bush. But I’m 100% behind him on this. This was an act of war against the US by organized terrorist groups and the nation(s) that support them. We need to investigate, find the people who organized and payed for this mass murder, and remove them from the world. We need to find out what countries supported them in this act of war and bring them to justice as well. If that means the US is now at war with Afghanistan, Iraq, or other countries, then so be it. Some of those “governments” have been funding terrorists for too long and it’s about time to someone held them accountable. And who knows, if we can replace a few of those Islamic-whacko theocracies with some free, open, democratic governments in the process it might bring the whole world a lot closer to peace and safety.