I was still unable to write anything with sense yesterday so I come late to the discussion.

What is the reaction in Germany? First some numbers and facts: Yesterday was to early for the newspapers to carry anything but quickl written articles. Today, the first nine pages of my newspaper and altogether 15 pages are solely devoted to the attack which shows you that it is not seen as something happening faw away with little relevance to us except having pity for the loss of human life. All major TV stations have changed all their programs to provide a continuous flow of information.

The overall impression is that this is an attack on 'us' and not on 'them' or 'you'. We are well aware that under slightly different circumstances and with a different group responsible it could have been Mainhattan (how we call Frankfurt at the river Main in jest for its skyline resembling an American town) instead of Manhattan or London or Paris (how long ago is it that a group threatened to bring a big civil plane down on Paris and only was intercepted at the refuelling in Spain?).

It is an attack not 'only' on thousands of humans but also on a lifestyle, an economy and values that are common since roughly fifty years to roughly spoken West Europe and North America. The disaster has hit us too and not only for the five confirmed German deaths (in the planes) and the several dozen still missing and presumed dead. We mourn with you and we ponder with you about the future consequences.

The attack has shown us a new quality of terrorism and war, a guerilla war without any restriction or remorse upon 'enemy' ground. Taken together all the West European terrorist/guerilla groups haven't claimed by their actions as many lifes over the last fifty years as have been lost within one and a half hours in New York.

Our own Red Army Faction has abducted planes with the aim of bargaining lifes for the freedom of their 'comrades' in jail and not with the aim to crash it on the Bundestag. Spain's ETA kills politicians and civilian deaths are still 'collateral damage' from their point of view. The 'liberation front' of Corse (Corsika?) bombs tourist hotel but only when they are empty and even the IRA has given (sometimes late, sometimes incompetent, sometimes misleading) warnings to bombs. I am far from painting these terrorists as goodies, but they have in common that they still have some restrictions in their methods of 'war'. Which of course doesn't make it any nicer if you or one of your relations is hit.

The future could bring us some copycat attacks on targets that were still considered unthinkable before: town centers, dams, nuclear reactors. They tell us the reactors are safe against an impact by a plane but I have seen yesterday an old interview with the architect of WTC telling years ago that the building was safe against any freak chance accident with a plane.

What can we do to prevent future attacks of that dimension or worse. I'm afraid that the gut reaction (take out the perpetrator as quickly as possible, increase saftey measures) will only be successful on the short run. It helps to soothe the feelings of hurt in America same (not in dimension but in feelings) as if the strongest guy on the schoolyard who has not only friends when finding that someone has pissed in his school satchel beats up the first one who chuckles.

On the long run, the conditions leading to feelings in a part of the world population that they have 'nothing to lose but their chains' will produce new martyrs and new ideas how to inflict the worst possible damage on what they perceive to be their enemy. Imagine a group gets a nuclear device in their hands and explodes it in a town. There are now enough people on the world who would do it right now if they could. No star wars program can help against that. A new Herostratos (or however he is spelled in English) is always easy to find.

We are safer if they wouldn't want to do it. We have to understand what pains them, what they feel to be injust, why they feel to be wronged, why they, appalingly to us, jump with joy about the news from New York. With 'they' I mean here not the terrorists themselves but the larger group from which they come from. Treat people in a way that they think they have nothing left to lose anymore then some of them might actually behave that way.

Freedom and safety for the world we love to live in will afford more measures than air sheriffs and stronger cockpit doors. I fear the politicians will only think about the easy measures. I fear that I'll live to see a nuclear bomb detonating in a town center or at an atomic reactor.

I hope I'm wrong

Wolfgang