world war c-terrorism and optimism

The way to win against terrorism is to recognize it for what it is and go on with life.
You can mourn and you should mourn.  You can support those that are injured.
Most certainly you should hunt down and punish (waterboarding doesn't sound so bad today does it?) the murderers. 
But most importantly you should put terrorism in its box and lock it away.  It is one or several people; an organization that has such little power that the only way it can hurt you is by taking your focus away from life.
3 people died and over one hundred were injured, some permanently and terribly maimed.  But if today was an average day, over 100 died in automobile accidents.  This is terrible only because the murderers were such evil people, who harm the innocent to get attention and to distract us.
We are at war with huge forces today.  Perhaps one day people can learn to live together and not as savages, but not today.  Bombs are going off all over the world.  If we give the terrorists what they want (and assuredly the television shows will do just that) then the terrorist win.
If we mourn, but put things in perspective; if we dedicate ourselves to making our economy stronger, our communities stronger and let our enemies know that they can strike as often as they can but we will hunt them down but not at the expense of growing as a people, then the terrorists can be kept where they belong, as a minor enemy and, eventually, we will overcome them.
The true challenge of terrorism is to rise against the weakness in ourselves that attracts the terrorists and gives them power.  If we rise far enough, the terrorists become nothing more than crazy people taking out their rage on the innocent.  That means we must strive to be better indivdually and as a nation and must redouble those efforts in the face of each new attack.  We must teach the terrorists that we are better than they are and if we cannot do that, then we have to ask who the right enemy is and see whether there is some lesson to be learned from the random harm done. 
I am not in particular favor of torture to prevent terrorism, because we need to strive to be something better than the terrorists.  I recognize that in the face of organized guerilla warfare, which is what this is, make no bones about that, we must be able to use the weapons of our enemies against them and in our defense.  I believe that we need to be som much better than our enemies, that we can shame them into withdrawing their attacks and that is where we might fail in this country.
In the end, it comes down to the same thing.  We must recognize all of our enemies-this small cell with their bombs are at the low end of the scale in my opinion.  More importantly, we must make ourselves stronger so that our enemies lose their ability to distract us and so they recognize us as a manufacturing power-house (which we were but are not); innovators with an eye toward the future (which we were, but are not); leaders to make the entire world a better place (which we have almost never been if at all) and a people willing to take on the hard jobs because we are strong people (which we might be if we have the right leadership-which we do not have).
I wish everyone well tonight, those in the USA and those who are outside the USA.  I also hope that the US will show that its people can rise to the challenge to show that freedom can exist with ability to grow as a people and not to fall into decay.  Find comfort in the fact that we are only here for a short time and the gift of the window of life is the ability to do good and the challenges like those faced today in Boston increase our opportunities in this regard, and do not lessen them.

All these blogs are rough drafts and only reflect the opinions of the author for the moment.  I feel for the losses to those who were hurt or suffered loss to their loved ones.