There is an instant, before the grief sets in, when shock carries us from one moment to the next. It is our bridge, our momentary defense against the unimaginable.

This time the shock must carry us further than usual. The unfolding events of a sunny Tuesday morning will touch thousands and thousands of American families.

The grief will be as widespread as it is deep. It may be days before friends and acquaintances of the innocents realize their losses. Not since our wars...most recently Vietnam, and World Wars I and II and Korea before that...will so many be touched by the taking of lives.

The urge for a complete and instant explanation is as understandable as it is fruitless. No doubt that day will arrive, though even then it will not satisfy.

The events of Tuesday, shocking though they may be, aren't entirely a surprise. In recent years, terrorism experts have warned of this nation's vulnerability to sneak attacks, via biological weaponry, suitcase bombs or the kind of suicide attack from which modern transportation can't protect itself.

And yes we have grown complacent. Security has become routine, even a joke to many air travelers: Yes, yes I packed my own bags.

Our carefree moments are over, buried in the gray dust that coated the dazed onlookers on streets of lower Manhattan after the first of the day's many tragedies.

From this day forward, our lives and our institutions will not be the same. This nation's sense of relative isolation from the kinds of disputes that have put the civilians of other lands squarely in harms way...from the Middle East to the Congo to Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka to Columbia...now vanishes. If, as suspected, the assaults of Tuesday are infact the work of murderers with international agendas, then our comparative indifference to world affairs likely will vanish with it.

Suddenly, with so many lives having tumbled like dominos, many of our most earnest concerns and obsessions-seem petty beyond belief. If a slowing economy already had brought pause to what, in retrospect, felt like a carefree era, this well planned attack jars us into what passes, too sadly, for the modern world.

Often it is foolhardy to speculate on the American psyche. But we have just become a more serious people. The bombing of Pearl Harbor ended the lives of some 2,400 U.S. military personnel and 1,200 civilians. Tuesdays conflagrations claimed many more lives.

On this day, someone set out to frighten us. And succeeded. That we must admit

Yet it would be dangerous to succumb in ways that would hearten the terrorists responsible for these acts.

The term, terrorist, comes not so much from the strength of the perpetrator, but rather from his ability to destroy the confidence of those he targets.

As Tuesday blossomed so tragically, most Americans were left to stare at screens filled with smoke, sprays of water from fire hoses...and expressions of fear for those who had suffered as well as those who would suffer next.

The fear, like the shock, is abundantly sensible. But not if we as a nation let those be our destinations. That would please those whose cowardice expresses itself in the capture of commercial airliners and the targeting of American landmarks.

For all that we as a people are feeling, this is a moment for quiet resolve. The nation has known 225 years of challenges and surmounted the lot.

It is reasonable to expect that America will change. Our losses will exceed this day's realization.

And yet the terror should not rest here. It should, and, in all likelihood, eventually will be turned back at those who today celebrate this broad river of American blood. In their twisted minds, this must be some mission of revenge.

But if our response is rooted in nothing more than noble vengeance, then that, too, cannot fully satisfy us.

The point here must be justice, the principle that inexactly has guided this country throughout its history.

That justice may not be swift. It is important, though, that it be sure.

For those who on Tuesday tore a part of America's heart, there must be one uneasy assurance: Life is long. We are not finished. And it is now they who must feel the terror.