Just before 9 a.m. yesterday, the world’s television screens were filled with a picture destined to become the abiding image of our age – heavy black smoke erupting from fiery gaping holes in the upper floors of New York City’s World Trade Center. During the terrible minutes that followed, the double towers that stood for this country’s pre-eminence stood no more and, as the pair of mighty buildings crumbled to the street below, another aircraft crashed into the helicopter pad at the Pentagon, explosions were reported and later discredited at the State Department and the Capitol, reports of other attacks poured in.

Air traffic nationwide was shut down immediately, federal government buildings were evacuated, national landmarks closed, state and local governments set their own emergency plans in motion. By late morning, Sept. 11, 2001, had become a day no one who lived through it will ever forget. And

it became the first day in what will be a lengthy and uncomfortable re-evaluation for the nation’s leaders of U.S. policies and protections designed specifically to stop these sorts of attacks.

The aftermath of this horrific sequence

of events now takes two paths. One, of course, is to track down the terrorists responsible. The attacks were exceedingly well coordinated; the scope and precision of the plan, the nature of the targets, all suggest well-funded terrorists, experienced and capable of carrying out these complex logistics with such awful success. Speculation immediately ran rampant, with Islamic

terrorists named as prime suspects.

Though he denied yesterday’s attacks, Osama Bin Laden allegedly was the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the attack on the USS Cole and boasts proudly of the depth of his hatred for the United States. In the coming days, perhaps weeks, many terrorist groups will play the abominable game of claiming credit through one anonymous spokesmen and denying it through another. This country’s political, military and law-enforcement leaders must take great care during this time not to join the speculation – the immediate and erroneous assumption that Islamic terrorists were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing should be potent reminder of the value of discretion. And it must use the same planning and care in targeting and carrying out what should be a powerful retaliation for this act of terrorism.

The second path is to determine how this could have happened. The nation’s intelligence network failed utterly. Aircraft from the nation’s busiest and most modern airports were hijacked and slammed into the heart of major cities. The extensive security precautions now in place at U.S. airports gave the public every reason to believe that hijacking commercial airliners from major American airports was something that no longer could occur. Yet it did occur – repeatedly in one morning, the devices that peer into locked luggage and that can detect car keys in a traveler’s pocket missed whatever weapons these terrorists used to commandeer these aircraft. It now is gruesomely clear that the sense of security the flying public has enjoyed was false.

After this two-pronged investigation must come re-evaluation. For years, experts in terrorism have warned that the real threat, now and in the future, is not from intercontinental missiles but from domestic attacks. Those warnings have come true; it now is up to |this county’s political leaders to act. From lax airport security to the ability of these terrorists to plan and execute such a multi-faceted attack on such vital and high profile targets, there is no denying the United States was caught napping. Until now, the White House – through several administrations – and Congress have talked about terrorism while spending for military hardware to deter unlikely threats. Among other things, yesterday was a priorities check.

Also in need of re-evaluation is this county’s decided turn toward isolationism. While such acts as rejecting international treaties on global warming or withdrawing from racism conferences in no way enabled this attack, the increasing trend to eschew international cooperation will enable such attacks to continue. The terrorism network is international, the flow of the information, the tactics and, most importantly, the money that bankrolls terrorism, represent nothing less than an underground world government. This is the new enemy and what it attacked Tuesday was not just select high-profile targets in one country; it was an attack upon civilization. This is the new world war and the United States cannot win it alone.