Ideally, we would pause here and take a more sanguine look at how we respond to events like this.
A good first step would be to reassess what constitutes a “victory” in the context of terrorist acts. Victory is not capturing or killing the perpetrators. That’s got to be done of course, but the nature of this kind of conflict is such that the terrorists can be the victors even though dead. The terrorists understand this, but it’s a lesson we’re slow to learn.
I’m not sure that we “won” this round, despite our “USA!” cheers. I think we’ve only confirmed our key vulnerability: we massively overreact. Now, if the most important thing is to capture or kill the perps, then yes, “nothing succeeds like excess”, as Shaw put it. But it’s important to understand that our excess is, in this case, our vulnerability.
From the perspective of terrorists, it must now appear ridiculously easy to throw this country into turmoil. Our population is so insistent on seeing our leaders take measures designed to make us feel secure (even if they’re really only for show) that the leaders dare not pull out all the stops. Then there’s the media frenzy feeding into the obsession. In a way, it’s the media, not the bomb, that is the terrorist’s main weapon in this conflict.
I don’t really know what to do about this. I’d love to see us develop more of a “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON” spirit, but maybe that’s not possible. Hell, we can’t even seem to do that with internet trolls, much less terrorists.