I hate to say it ... I REALLY hate to say it ... but something like this was necessary to truly wake up the Australian-in-the-Street as to just how serious a threat this is and how much a part of it they themselves are going to be. They were just like us pre-9/11: "What could possibly happen to us? We're surrounded by oceans!" Now their eyes have been awakened, just as ours were.
Inevitably, similar attacks will occur in Canada, and the UK, and inside Australia itself. And more and more will be awakened. Only then will we really be able to get down to business and annihilate these psychopathic murderers off the face of the planet.
All that said, I too pray for all the victims, and for all the people of Australia who are certainly feeling the same shock and anger and a whole other stew of emotions just as we felt in the days after 9/11. Let us also pray that their eventual reaction is the same as ours: A massive surge of patriotism, and an unceasing desire to destroy these subhuman scum in order to save our liberty.
I tried to go somewhere to post a note of condolence like all the US embassy web sites had set up after 9/11, but all the Australian embassy sites I found were pretty much business as usual except for special pages telling their citizens how to get the hell out of Indonesia.
I hate to say it ... I REALLY hate to say it ... but something like this was necessary to truly wake up the Australian-in-the-Street as to just how serious a threat this is and how much a part of it they themselves are going to be. I strongly disagree with this assessment. This is akin to saying it is necessary for a young woman to be brutally raped before she realizes... And at any rate, maybe some have a harsher assessment. If you can say bombing a couple hundred people into oblivion is a good object lesson- why can't the next Joe say "No, that's not enough. What's really necessary and I REALLY hate to say it but what the US (Australia, Britain etc) needs is to have half its major cities wiped out by a bio weapon or nuke. Then they'll wake up". There is essentially no difference in those statements except degree- and in matters of degree and loss of life, it is not for you to say what is an appropriate number of people to die and be maimed. A judgement like lies solely with God.
If people were "asleep" before 9/11, this is naive, true. Naivity isn't a killing offense though and to say that this was necessary is, in a way, saying the victims "had it coming".