With a national nightmare still unfolding, members of the faculty attempted to add some perspective Tuesday to the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Expressing shock and disbelief on a day filled with emotion, many professors urged caution as the government continues its emergency response and investigation.
Several professors said the unprecedented level of the attack, combined with the projected loss of human life, may be especially traumatic for a country that had seemed immune to a large-scale attack.
Albert Eldridge, associate professor of political science and an expert on terrorism, cited comparisons to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Although the nature of the attacks are different, he said, they are similar in their potential effects on the psychology of a nation that had never experienced large-scale war-like behavior at home.
"I think today we lost a lot of innocence," Eldridge said.
"There's always been a false sense of security here, that the most powerful country in the world, the last superpower, is somehow invulnerable. But in a democracy such as this, there are limits as to how we can restrict behavior and still retain democratic principles," he said.
The World Trade Center and the Pentagon are two of the country's largest, most important buildings as centers for commerce and military operations. But they also have symbolic significance, Eldridge said.
"The Pentagon is the symbol of American military superiority," he said. "The attack doesn't really do much to America's ability to defend itself, but it's still symbolic."
Professor of History Martin Miller, whose course "Terrorism, 1848-1968" met Tuesday for an open discussion, said immediate action by the United States in the form of a military attack might not be the best response.
Miller compared U.S. retaliation to applying a Band-Aid to a cut--the bleeding will stop, but only temporarily.
The professor said that historically, there are reasons for terrorism, and that the government must determine the reasoning behind the attack before launching a counter-strike.
"We didn't win the Cold War by going to war with the Soviet Union and nuking them out of existence," Miller said. "If we won the Cold War... we won it because we did much more significant things by avoiding the catastrophe of war."
About 100 people attended a forum at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy Tuesday afternoon. With faces showing a mix of fear and uncertainty, experts and community members discussed issues ranging from the terrorists' methods to long-term implications for foreign policy.
"This was certainly, in a perverse way, an advanced operation," said Bruce Jentleson, director of the Sanford Institute.
"The expertise was, not to stretch the analogy, akin to a D-Day in what we know about terrorism. There was no warning," he said.
Jentleson and others stressed the need to not react out of passion, but rather to wait until more information is available before calling for a response. Past terrorist attacks have required several weeks or longer before retaliation has taken place.
Lessons can be learned from the experience Israel and other nations have had with terrorism, said Frederick Mayer, associate professor of public policy.
"I don't think we know everything about the rage that's out there. In many quarters of the world, people have come to believe, wrongly I think, that the United States is an evil force," Mayer said.
He added that although a response is necessary, the government should exercise caution. "We look at it as a deterrent, but the message could be seen as a challenge in some circles."
Whatever the response, professors agreed that there is clearly a need for more anti-terrorism measures.
Richard Stubbing, professor of the practice emeritus at the Sanford Institute, suggested that President George W. Bush may want to shift defense priorities away from national missile defense in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
"Things are very different today than they were yesterday," he said.
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