Tragedy strikes. We grieve for the lost lives, including the lives of many emergency response personnel.

People are comparing this to Pearl Harbor. There are some similarities.

This time, though, we don't know the 'return address'. There's a lot of assuming this is Osama Bin Laden at work. Safe guess, but let's make sure before we do anything rash.

a quote from CNN:

Three Palestinian groups -- Hamas, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad -- deny responsibility for the attacks, but blame U.S. policies in the Mideast.

I think there's something to this. We are a party to injustice in the Middle East (though I'm sure I wouldn't agree with the perpetrators concept of 'justice'). It is no surprise that we are a target of attack. This is a tragedy. The criminals responsible should be brought to justice. But we have brought some of this on ourselves. Civilians are suffering here today. It's horrible. And civilians suffer all around the world every day, many in situations that the USA ignores or abets. The reciprocity is sad.

That's not to say if we did the just thing that wouldn't also bring suffering. At least in justice there's the peace of knowing you've done right.

Discussion of some of these issues (mostly on the same side as what I've said) is going on at MetaFilter (slow-loading because of volume of hits).