Millions of Americans watched the beginning of a world war today, glued to TV sets, seeing parts of our greatest city vaporized.
The abhorrent television pictures captured the unbelievable scene of skyscrapers disintegrating, the New York skyline changing forever, close-ups of New Yorkers dying, fleeing for their lives.
And the world as we have known it will never again be the same.
Nothing in written fiction, movies and TV could compare with the grotesque drama of a great civilization falling prey to madmen bent on destroying symbols of the planet's mightiest nation.
The blunt abhorrence of mass butchery was there for all to see in unbelievable, ugly reality.
Haunting scenes of human suffering, mankind's fragility in the face of purposeful, evil murderers as devastation smashed into our homes via the tube.
The reality trivialized Hollywood's make-believe drama, special effects, digitizing and other ersatz tricks employed to serve up chilling terror.
This was the real thing in stunning, horrifying, abominable detail, close-up and beyond belief.
For all its faults, television and its many channels provided a rallying point for all Americans.
It allowed us to come together as a united whole, galvanizing a vigorous people with a strengthened resolve to discover the instigators of this obscene attack on innocent humanity.
Certainly these pictures and sounds created a determination among us to root out the planners and perpetrators. The experience fostered a will to punish them and the state, philosophy or fanatic religion that spawned this tragedy.
The cowardly, malignant act of war against innocent people cannot escape reprisal and punishment. If not, no nation or people will ever again know true peace.
Indeed, this attack unleashes a new sort of war. A 21st century innovation of slaughter without warning and seemingly without a rational explanation.
Does safety exist anywhere if it cannot be found in the citadel of a peaceful, democratic state dedicated to the common man?
We Americans witnessed history in the making today, a portent of the future of international relations.
The olive branch can no longer be extended to the Middle East, where the United States has attempted to broker some sort of peace or lasting truce to ancient enemies who know only hate, calumny and death.
In the second century, the Roman empire found a solution to a similar problem during the height of Roman greatness.
The Mediterranean world at the time was held hostage to the warlike barbarians of the city-state of Carthage, who raped, plundered and enslaved at will, sweeping through their neighbors with murderous ferocity.
The might of Rome, awakened at last to the depravity of Carthaginians and their rapacious, bloodthirsty brutality, took action.
At the height of the Tunic Wars Rome invaded Carthage, destroying its armies, slaying every Carthaginian man, woman, child, goat and dog.
Caesar's legions burned to the ground every structure in the land and then sowed the ground with salt so nothing would grow there again.
From that ancient day to this, Carthage has not been heard from except as a suburb of the city of Tunis.
Perhaps there are those among us who would say that Caesar went too far.
But those who watched their television sets this morning would not agree.
These contemporary Carthaginians, whatever their cause, whatever country they serve, whichever leader they follow or whatever religion they espouse, deserve no better.
