To answer Adam's question, much of our response to terrorism has been based on irrational fear of The Other.
Though there was no justification, our response to terrorism included invading Iraq. We did that because Thomas Friedman thought some brown people needed to suck on this, and because Richard Cohen thought violence would provide him with needed therapy. We should never forget that these people are racist monsters whose personal psychodramas could only be soothed by the indiscriminate killing of people they obviously do not see as human.
