War on American Soil

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Tuesday's terrorist strikes at the World Trade Center "bring the horror of war into Americans' lives in ways others have been experiencing it for decades," according to Michael Frisch, professor of American History at the University at Buffalo.

"The power of this event demonstrates how vulnerable -- which means how interrelated -- all of us in the world really are and how necessary communal dialogue is on a worldwide basis.

"All such terrorist attacks like this have something in common -- on a national level -- with rape, in that they produce the sense of terror and rage that women feel when sexually violated -- the power of something to penetrate to our core, violate our physical integrity, threaten our lives and change everything in our lives."

"This event is MUCH MORE terrifying than a missile attack because of the enormous effect on the American community. Who will want to step on a plane again? Who will feel safe anywhere? An anti-missile shield might give us a false sense of security, but as these events prove, it cannot protect us from those bent on bringing the reality of military conflict to American soil."